


Eclipse

by dear_daydreaming_deer



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Altean Lance (Voltron), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Royalty, And teasing, Aromantic Asexual Pidge | Katie Holt, Awkward Flirting, Because yes, Betrayal, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Cyberpunk, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Forbidden Love, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gay Keith (Voltron), Government Secrets, Hunk (Voltron) is so Pure, Insecure Lance (Voltron), Inspired by Romeo and Juliet, Keith (Voltron) is Bad at Feelings, Langst, M/M, Minor Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Minor Hunk/Shay (Voltron), Multiple powers, No one is good, Pain, Pining Keith (Voltron), Plague, Prince Keith (Voltron), Prince Lance (Voltron), Shadam, Space boys, THESE FUCKING DORKS, War, Witches, a bit tsundere because why not, a war between aesthetics I guess, and some lenny face worthy stuff, bad boy keith, btw earth is dead ;-;, but also fluff, dramatic irony is painful af so here, elemental powers, emo keith, i cri every tyme, i didn't mean to but now lotor is sadistic af, i dont sleep so i wrote this instead, i swear that these boys are going to kill me, jk i love you all, keith sneaking out, klance, lance has freckles which is very important imo, leakira - Freeform, lots of fluff, magical abilites, magical fantasy realm, so hopefully its worth the angst, so much gay, so sorry for the super descriptive aesthetic stuff, suffer, they are both royals but think that the other is a peasant, this fanfic is painful to write, water. earth. fire. air. fuck i wanna make a lot of airbender references, why do i make the characters suffer
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-22
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-04-26 05:21:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 46,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14395185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dear_daydreaming_deer/pseuds/dear_daydreaming_deer
Summary: "The Eclipse is coming."For centuries, the Kingdoms of Solera and Lunae have been fighting a deadly war against each other. Day vs night, the sun vs the moons, light vs darkness. The Royals attempted to negotiate multiple times but neither side could get past their differences: Solera lived in a never-ending day, Lunae in a constant night; the people consisted of different species and had contrasting majeia powers that were unique to their own kingdom.The Altean Prince Lancelot is a child of the day while the Galran Prince Akira is a child of the night. But neither seem to fit into their own kingdom and both feel a constant underlying force pulling them to the wall that separates their lands. When Prince Akira dresses as a peasant, sneaks out of the palace, and manages to cross the wall that divides them, he meets a young commoner named Lance after he accidentally offends him. The two start off as rivals but soon become fast friends after realizing their similarities.The eclipse is coming and these two princes seem to be the only way to connect the two rivaling kingdoms and end the war. In order to do that though, the two must overcome their own problems and realize their feelings for each other.





	1. Kamani

No one in the Kingdom of Solera had ever seen a night sky or a Winter season for centuries. The only glimpse of those hidden sights came from the old paintings drawn by his ancient ancestors or the tales told from old ‘thysias’ as they called them- those who sacrificed themselves to the dark in order to join the space elite and protect their kingdom from foreign enemies. 

Lance was a prince of the Sun who dreamed of the stars and moons- a child of the day whose fingers itched to climb across the wall that kept him from the land of night. Like the waves of the seas in the North and West, the moons seemed to pull at him, tugging and tugging, tempting like a wicked siren with a gorgeous mask and melodic voice. 

It seemed like everything he would ever want would be beyond his grasp, forbidden to him. 

Including mageia. 

The young prince stood on the raised platform, overlooking the crowd of royals, nobles, generals, mágos, military officers, courtsmen and women, and guests of honor. As promised, his family and closest friends sat at the front, along with King Alfor. Lance would be lying if he said that he wasn’t nervous. He was terrified. But the words of encouragement his friends and family had given him ran through his head, keeping him on the stage among the semi-circle of pedestals that surrounded him, which, despite only reaching his bottom rib felt like they towered above him. 

Only one or two rows of people knew the truth coming into this, but the dozens of other rows of people had been invited to this and gladly accepted, excited to see what the third child of the great McClains would be able to do. Lance wished that they knew the truth beforehand so he didn’t feel like he needed to give them a refund on their time. 

His royal Altean marks were clearly visible, pronounced by the white, gold, and cerulean attire he wore. They ran under his cheeks and across the tanned skin of his body. Before he stepped out from behind those curtains, he wished he could burn them. Or that Sebastian would. They were like a crown, exclaiming who he was so loudly that there was no chance for any sort of hiding in this situation. If only he could wipe them off. Then he would be like everyone else and no one would care about his Kamani results. 

However, then, at that moment, as he politely bowed and waved to the crowd, he clung to them like a lifeguard. Indeed, they were like a crown. These markings were also what protected him. It was evidence that he was a prince and was a McClain either way. 

They also gave him hope. He swore he could feel them tingling, like when he makes them glow in the dark, and it was the exact feeling that he had always heard his family and the other Alteans describe when they spoke of using their powers or being near their primary element. A warmth, a pulsing of energy. A lifeboat out in this sea that gave him hope that he might actually have access to mageia. 

He was so struck by the sudden feeling that he almost stumbled in his stride, brushing his facial marks with his finger in disbelief before he composed himself. 

According to Kamani tradition, he was supposed to approach each pedestal one by one and show the audience if he could control the element or not. It wasn’t supposed to be a surprise to the one partaking in the Kamani since, as a royal, they would most likely already know (having their awakening), but instead a way to show the world. However, unlike most, he didn’t even have to fake the suspense and wonder, considering the fact that he hadn’t had his awakening yet. 

Two gorgeous water fountains framed the marble pedestals on either side, working as decoration of cool colors against the contrasting warm elements. Warily, he gave the audience one last glance, a forced smile on his face. His eyes caught Hunk and Pidge, who both gave encouraging looks as he turned away to face the exact substances that would probably result in the downfall of his position in the Kingdom. He approached the pedestal in the exact center of the semicircle. 

On it was a pyramid of stacked stones, all perfectly balanced and polished. As he held out his hand before them, he didn’t feel the sensation in his marks change and he promptly stepped away from them, moving down the line to the left. With each element he approached, the feeling grew stronger but he still found himself unable to manipulate any of them: A floating ball of light, a young wyvern that roared and attempted to speak to him to test his ability to communicate to other creatures, and a few more. 

When he reached the lit golden candelabra at the very end beside the fountain, he found himself practically shaking with hardly contained energy and his marks glowed brightly, so much so that there were a few quiet whispers of people already claiming they won bets or of how he took after his brother, Sebastian, and his father. He had never felt this way around fire before, but it was a known fact that one’s awakening and the Kamani ceremony opened very powerful gates into one’s mageia abilities. The connection between a user and their element grew noticeably strong due to an opened line of communication with their elemental ancestors, who helped ensure the user’s moment of discovery as well as the Kingdom’s memory of them. 

Lance’s grin became more genuine, the corners of his eyes crinkling as his Altean marks rose with his cheeks. However, when he clung to that connection, focusing on the senses the element created in him like he had been taught- the scent of smoke, the feeling of warmth, the bright colors that lit up any corners of darkness and chased the shadows away- he felt the connection shriveling, a dull ache spreading through his marks. It fled like a frightened wild animal and in turn he bubbled with frustration, but something told him that that was coming from his ancestors. It had slipped from his fingers, unable to be trained. 

Lance pushed. He stepped forward with determination, trying to clutch onto the opening with little avail. With every tug it pulled further away. He imagined the flames in his hands, thought of the great magos his history textbooks spoke of, and focused every inch of his attention on his senses of it. But the connection was cut, and as he lowered his arm and turned away, it continued to fade. He tried to ignore the reactions of the crowd, but it was nearly impossible. 

Lance didn’t let his hopes get too high this time when he approached the remaining pedestals to the right. He barely paid attention to what the elements were at all- a potted bonsai tree symbolizing plant life, a wounded fairy that would show if he held the element of healing. All he knew was that, like before, as he reached the end, the sensation of power and heat grew. This time, it was a lightning bolt pulsing through a bent metal figure. It was the last possible element and the whole audience shifted in their seats, excited to have the suspension dissolve after having to wait through all of the elements and experiencing a false alarm. This was the last elemental power he could have so of course the audience would naturally assume that it would be his chosen primary element, especially since his sister held the same one, but Lance knew better. He should’ve had his awakening by now if he really was a magos. 

It didn’t work. Lightning. Senses. Ancestors. No matter what, the connection just continued to fade, leaving him frustrated, exasperated, and furious yet again, despite his anticipation of this ending. Defeated. He was  _ defeated _ . His clammy hands, the rushing of blood through his body, and the sound of the nearby fountains were just too distracting, interrupting him before he furiously shoved them away in an attempt to bring him back to the task at hand. In turn, it only dulled further, his arm slumping lazily to his side. 

His eyes bore into his metal reflection, his blue eyes glaring back at him. There was no fire in them. No lightning. Just nothingness. Just the two eyes of a royal Altean prince with no majeia. 

Every muscle in his body seemed to collapse and his shoulders threatened to slump but, as he felt himself sink, his body rose in turn. With every ounce of strength he had, he turned back to the audience, shoulders high and mouth pressed into a tight smile. Then, he strode to the center of the stage, bowed, and marched back behind the golden curtains, careful to not think too much about the growing chatter in the seats, the gasps, the collection of questioning furrowed brows, and even worse- the uncomfortable silence and stiffness of the first two rows. From the ones who knew this would happen and still let themselves hope. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> // I am super excited to post my first fanfic on this site! Thank you for reading the first chapter of this book and please have a nice day.//


	2. Lord Jackass

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What is this, Pidge? I swear half of it is in another language,” Lance said. He squinted at the page, scrutinizing it as he tried to make sense of the disorganised yet genius madness. Many of the words reached beyond his vocabulary and he was left looking to his friend for answers.
> 
> Pidge grinned brightly, lifting the dark bags under her eyes with her cheeks. “I was doing some reading last night and came across an account of an old Soleran ruler with an extraordinarily rare mageia power. No one has since been able to control the element.”
> 
> “And you think that it is possible I could have it?”
> 
> “Highly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note:   
> I changed one detail from the last chapter. King Alfor is no longer Lance's uncle.
> 
> I will be continuing to edit everything I write but there will most likely not be any significant changes. It won't be necessary to reread and if I do end up changing something, I will notify you.

_ All Solerans are capable of using mageia but to have royal blood means to have some of the greatest natural  _ _ mageía abilities in the Kingdom of Solera. _

Lance sighed, repeating the words of the ancient book in his head as he gazed at his older brother and sister training through the translucent sphere that separated them. Vermillion flames and brilliant electric bolts thrashed about wildly, shooting from fingertips and encircling their unscorched bodies, burning through the walls and constantly moving, being manipulated by his step-siblings’ power. As usual, the young boy was entranced, far more interested in viewing mageia abilities first-hand than reading the dusty textbook on them in his lap, even if the fire came dangerously close, bouncing off of his protective bubble before shooting back into Sebastian’s hands or if Lucina’s lightning electrocuted the air, sending a tingling sensation through his spine and making his hair stand on its ends from static electricity. 

Though Lucina was just nineteen, three years older than him, she still kept the fight pretty even against their twenty-one-year-old brother. Though, whether that was because they were even in skill, were both fighting with similar elements, or because Sebastian was taking it easy on her- he couldn’t tell. Perhaps the two of them had fought so much that they just couldn’t surprise each other anymore. 

“Lance!” At that moment, the sound of his name and a sort of sizzling burst broke through his thoughts and his attention snapped to the crystal doors of the room, which were open wide with a small figure he recognized all too well standing in the center of the frame of it. Pidge held up two small hands in surrender, a quickly formed branch in the air, blocking a direct hit from a spiraling ball of fire. The branch burst into flames, quickly turning to ash in the air before Pidge. 

“Pidge, you know that it is dangerous to come barging in here!” Coran exclaimed. He jumped and rushed over to make sure that the adolescent was okay as he threw up a wall of rocks to protect her from any more hits. 

Pidge looked unaffected though, not even glancing twice at her burning branch as she nonchalantly skipped over to where Lance was sitting, Coran on her tail. 

“I’m fine, Coran,” she mumbled hurriedly before plopping on the wall next to him. “I barge in here practically everyday and I have yet to get a scratch.”

It was true, Lance supposed. Really she was the one they should’ve been worried about. She  _ gave  _ scratches. Might have only been nearly fourteen years old but had always been a fiesty one. 

“One of these days you might just get hurt though. You know you aren’t allowed in here,” Lance butted in, glancing warily at the door. He doubted that Coran or any of the guards would say anything but if their manners & etiquette teachers saw how much they dropped their formalities around each other, they would be in for a world of trouble. Lance  _ technically _ wasn’t supposed to call Katie by her nickname and Katie was  _ technically _ supposed to call Lance ‘your highness’, but neither of them ever did so unless they were in the public eye or were near their teachers (and usually even then they over-dramatized the formalities to subtly make fun of the strict rules). Plus, with the way Pidge just burst through the doors with unruly, tawny-copper, ragamuffin hair; her round wired glasses smudged and crooked on her freckled button nose; her right forearm covered in writing; in one of her older brother’s oversized white shirts, her plaid green pajama pants rolled up to her scraped knees, mismatched socks at different heights, and combat boots, he was sure that Mrs. Wordstroem would’ve had a heart attack. 

Pidge didn’t even bother to pack the papers on her back properly in a bag. Instead, a slapdash jagged vine wrapped itself diagonally across her torso like one of the straps of a winged messenger’s bag. It twisted and curled itself around a giant book (whose contents seemed to not be able to be held back by the tearing binds) and a hastily tied stack of crumpled papers covered to the brim in Pidge’s microscopic handwriting and meticulous diagrams. The contents of the haphazardly made backpack spilled over the edges of the branch and vine skeleton, only held in by what appeared to be a flap made from a thick leaf.

“Neither are you but you still get let in. Besides, that may be the ‘official rules’ but no one  _ really _ cares.” 

That was also true, and it wasn’t like he didn’t mind Pidge’s company. She may have been a couple years younger but she had always been a pleasant companion in a palace filled with so few residents his age. He had never been allowed to leave the palace to socialize with others unless if it was formal or for business so Pidge and his siblings were the closest thing he had. Ever since the young girl was born, Lance had been in her constant company. They had become quick friends as they grew together in the palace nursery and playroom. Lance even remembered helping her learn to walk as a toddler in the courtyard as Hunk, his best friend, held her other hand as they walked along the paths. He remembered the three of them attending Hunk’s elemental ceremony when he turned seven, all of them in similar party hats and goofy smiles. The trio had stuck together ever since, earning the nickname of ‘The Three Musketeers’ among the palace guards and nobles. He now considered Princess Katie as his younger sister. The trio was inseparable and it was the one anchor holding Lance down in this constant storm. 

As Coran expanded Lance’s protective bubble around Pidge, the stone walls came down and Lucina stepped out for Aurelia’s- Sebastian’s best friend- training session with him. 

“Anyways, what’s up, Pidge?” Lance asked, as if he didn’t probably already know. It seemed like there were only three reasons why Pidge stormed in here lately: to complain about her teachers and fellow students being close-minded and Mrs. Wordstroem’s outdated views (which was reasonable enough), animatedly chatter about her latest projects and discoveries- technological or mageia-related (which sometimes made him envious but mostly proud and excited for her), or to throw around solutions to his “mageia problem” after her late nights of reading (which made him hopeful at first but now just seemed to tie an anchor to his unflinching fate). Based on her rugged appearance, she must’ve dropped everything to come in here, meaning that it had to be that she discovered something. Based on the latest book he knows she read, he could assume that she had come in here for the third reason. 

“I think I found something.” She pulled the makeshift satchel off her back, lifting the flap and letting the contents spill abandoned on the marble floor. 

Pidge brushes the palm of her hand across the journal, asking it to give her access. From closer up, Lance could see bands of fraying twine and ribbon holding the gigantic book (he really didn’t know how it could fit on the small girl’s back) shut pop off, contents not bound into it spilling from the edges in the form of pages bookmarked by folded corners, wax stamped letters, dozens of little colorful flags and cards sticking from edges to hold specific places, photographs paper clipped in, dried flowers and leaves, sketches, data tables, maps, and multiple stolen pages from various books, all covered in mostly green highlighter and countless notes. This was Pidge’s book. Her journal. Her time capsule. Her  _ clock _ . He recognized the animated engravings on the back as those similar to his own glass journal, the familiar ones he had traced a thousand times, his fingertips gliding across the ancient Soleran symbols, the elements, all circles and and swirls with sharp triangles, other polygons, shapeless lines, and calligraphy of past forgotten languages kissing each side, all forming one grand unique mandala with their own personal ishara or ‘face’, as they called it, in the center. Every royal had one from birth- their own personal mandala tattooed onto their back temporarily to be later joined with their matching journal and life glass. All were different but cohesive and vaguely similar like snowflakes, fingerprints, or Altean marks. They all connected them to their mageia and elemental ancestors as well as their fate. 

Glass journals or ‘stories’ were thick empty books royals gained as soon as they were able to draw, shared the same mandala marking as their life glass or clock, and recorded everything in a person’s life and what they wrote or drew during the duration of the time glass’ countdown. It could only be opened by the owner. 

Pidge’s mandala was a mass of intertwining branches, vines, and stems that weaves in and out through other plant life, holding the entire complex system of gears and computer parts together. There was a sort of unrestrained disaster of variety, yet there was also simultaneously a organized look to it- meticulous, coordinated, precise, calculated, purposeful, and yet innovative and unique. 

It took a moment until Pidge finally found the page she was looking for but, when she did, Lance was met with detailed diagrams, scribbled notes, and many circles around important underlined information. The footprints of green highlighter danced everywhere. 

“What is this, Pidge? I swear half of it is in another language,” Lance said. He squinted at the page, scrutinising it as he tried to make sense of the disorganised yet genius madness. Many of the words reached beyond his vocabulary and he was left looking to his friend for answers. 

Pidge grinned brightly, lifting the dark bags under her eyes with her cheeks. “I was doing some reading last night and came across an account of an old Soleran ruler with an extraordinarily rare mageia power. No one has since been able to control the element.”

“And you think that it is possible I could have it?”

“Highly.” She pointed at a section of the page. “His name was King Ignatius I, and he holds many similarities to you. He was believed to not hold any mageia abilities and was not able to control any of the elements during the Kamani ceremony, though his markings glowed near the elements of fire and electricity. He was a charismatic and flirtatious man who advocated for peace and had a great sense of humor,” she rambled on without much time in between her sentences to take a breath, passion sparking in her amber-brown eyes. “He fought for the people, was open-minded, romantic, passionate, and skilled in far-range archery and shooting. He also held a great interest in astronomy like you, which was highly controversial for the time. We know today that many elemental ancestors share common traits and interests, especially the more rare the element. The point is, I think that you should give his element a try. I really think I’m onto something here.”

Lance smiled wryly, trying to hold back the bitter thought: ‘ _ That’s what you said last time’ _ . At the same time, he couldn’t help but feel the never-dying spark of hope, despite how small it was. “What was his element?”

“The sun. It would explain the simultaneous connection with fire and electricity.”

“The _sun_?” Lance blinked, his jaw slightly slack in wonder. “That’s amazing. But is that even possible? Sounds like a ridiculous amount of power.”

“I don’t know, but he did have it. He was able to concentrate the sun’s energy, heat, and light into one area. It was such a great and unique power that it didn’t make an appearance until he was much older than usual.”

“Well, then what do I do?”

“Even when King Ignatius I’s elemental mageia did awaken, he had extreme difficulty channeling it for some time considering the fact that there were only a couple of elemental ancestors to guide him. I suggest that in order to test it out, you should attempt it near his grave. This will increase the connection. He never fought in the war until the one fateful day when he died in battle after he managed to physically move the sun so much that five of the moons stopped glowing in Lunae, significantly weakening their power. Hence, his gravesite is located on the border at the ancient battlefield that he once fought on- Lake Amani- the place he discovered his powers and had spent most of his days at.”

Lance sighed, sinking further against the wall until it was more like he was lying down. “And how do you suppose I get there, Mrs. Walking Encyclopedia? You know I’m not allowed to leave the palace alone- especially to go to the  _ border _ .”

“Leave that to me. I already have a plan.” Knowing Pidge, she probably not only had  _ a  _ plan but  plans A through Z times two.

Lance’s rational side poked him in the shoulder, whispering warnings of danger with the voices of tradition and rules- voices he had been taught to obey all his life. But despite his teachers’ attempts, they were never as loud or constant or pulling as the words his heart spoke. His emotions tugged him to one side- curious, longing,  _ begging.  _ He had gone close to the border before, and every time his hunger was never satisfied. His thirst only grew. Over their roaring, he couldn’t hear ration. Only his never-ending wants and the siren singing a sweet melody in the hopes of guiding him as close to Lunae as possible. “Pidgeeee.” He groaned, throwing his head back. “I can’t believe you are actually encouraging this. You know I won’t say no. Are you trying to get me in trouble?”

“Yes, yes I am. It’s my job as your friend to do so.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works…”

“In either case, it’s my job to try to bring you peace by figuring out the question to your elemental abilities and letting you follow your desires.”

“Yeah, yeah. What’s the plan?”

Pidge leaned in and whispered the familiar phrase, “Follow me.”

And he did without hesitation. 

-

Lance had to admit that Pidge had thought this through quite thoroughly. And now everything was going to plan. 

Well, at least, that was until he reached the lake.  

Pidge had every little detail accounted for, leaving him able to easily slip out of the palace, into town, and beyond to the countryside without his identity being revealed or being spotted by guards. 

His royal Altean marks were painted over with long-lasting resistant paint to match his skin tone, and, to further hide his identity as he escaped the palace grounds and rode through the Kingdom of Corazón, he wore an azure, satin, and hooded cloak with sleeves. Golden pins secured it together, guaranteeing that it wouldn’t come off and reveal himself. To be safe, he wore traditional Qalbian- the village he would be in the most- attire: blue and white patterned harem pants with a silk sapphire scarf and strands of colorful string beads, sequins, tassels, gems, and dangling gold chains, rings, and paper thin circular plates wrapped around his hips. 

His wrists were wrapped in metal, glittering, and beaded bracelets, contrasting the black, white, and gold tattoo of the sun on his bare bicep. In the blazing light from the sun, the thick bands of bells below the hems of his pants (which were lined with small hanging colorful tassels and pom-poms) sparkled and reflected the colors around him with luster. 

However, despite his troubles, he soon found himself face to face with the Lord of all jackasses. 

-

The crystal blue water of Lake Amani displayed a clear mirrored prince, the sun high in the sky floating only what appeared to be a foot above his head in the water. 

Lance had snuck out and taken many strange trips across Solera planned by Pidge and Hunk- all of which were to grave sites of various elemental ancestors, locations of rare elements, or wise scholars who might offer him ancient texts or their much desired knowledge. Every trip only increased his disappointment, relationship with his people, and curiosity of Lunae, the world beyond the capital, and mageia. He hadn’t gained much from his travels. It only destroyed his hope and continued to make him feel like he was a caged bird. 

Never in his trips before, however, had he gone this far out from the palace. Never before had he journeyed this close to the border on his own. 

He could feel it. The pull. Not towards the sun he stared intently at but towards the bordering crystal wall only a few dozens of feet behind him. Something was keeping him grounded though, which only made him feel that foolishly positive and impulsive feeling. 

‘Perhaps it is King Ignatius I,’ Lance thought to himself, only letting himself play with the idea in order to maintain a positive mindset for his elemental try-outs. 

As he had done at his Kamani ceremony and a thousand times afterwards, he focused in on the element. He channeled messages to his ancestors, trying to call out to Ignatius for answers and guidance. His senses zoned in on light, warmth, color, and life. 

With his legs folded under him, he sat beside Ignatius’ grave at the water. It used to be under a red blossom tree on a sort of island in the middle of the lake that the king had always ridden out to on a canoe, but as the years went by, the lake had dried up. What once used to be a great lake with a standing island was now a mere pond. They had Lunae to blame for that one. 

The island that once sat in the middle of it was not an island at all now, but instead a hill that overlooked the edge of the pond. 

Lance could understand why this would be a place that largely focused on the sun. It was at the center of life with large koi dragons and Corazonian nymphs dancing in the lake, cat frogs leaping on the surface of the water, bronze cranes drinking from the edge with their two heads, snapping fruits on red and pink blossom trees, blue glass flowers, long green grass, lion tails, golden bamboo, and tiny horned alicorns on flame dancing above the scene, creating what Lance could only describe as mini suns in the lake’s mirror. The heat of the sun beat down without burning, simply letting everything there grow. 

Lance heard whispers. There but barely. Someone calling out to him from beyond. Distant but also so near. He felt his Altean marks tingle and he was certain that they would be glowing if it weren’t for Pidge’s special paint.

_ The sun.  _ Golden, hot, and bright. Brazen, beautiful, and alive. 

Though nothing changed- not the color, light, heat, or position, Lance felt a channel slip open as he gazed at the ball of light in the water. 

“King Ignatius I, I bow down to you and ask you for your guidance. If you are indeed my elemental ancestor, please lend me your connection in hopes of me being able to awaken my abilities _ , _ ” Lance said, getting on his knees and bowing before the grave. 

The prince heard rustling behind him but he couldn’t care because, for the first time ever, he had received a response.

‘ _ You are in the right place for the wrong reasons, Prince Lancelot. _ ’

“Ignatius?” His eyes widened in shock, his hands shooting out between the sun and grave as he took the stance he was long trained to take. 

The noises from his back grew though he clutched onto this one line of connection. 

‘ _ Ignatius isn’t here, young one. _ ’ 

“Who is ther-”

“What are you doing?” someone else interrupted. 

Lance whipped his head around and stumbled back. 

The connection immediately snapped off. Only a sizzle was left- crackling in the distance. A wick burnt to the wax. “-e then…?” He finished off, his voice fading. 

The answer was a bewildered looking stranger staring directly at him. He was hanging from a tree by a braided and flowered vine, his dark eyes wild with curiosity. 

Realization hit him and Lance’s expression immediately soured. “What are  _ you  _ doing?” 

“I asked you first,” the man said, sliding off of the vine with a thud. 

As the stranger approached him, his Myriad (which he had used to get here) whinnied and roared. In a split second of terror, the creature had yanked himself free from the ropes that held him to a pink blossom tree and had begun to sprint away into the woods at speeds only a wind dancer, light sprinter, messenger avian, oceanic siren swift, or Lunaean shadow sweeper could travel at. None of which Lance was.

“Dude,” Lance spat at the stranger. “You just scared my Myriad away!”

The man looked confused, dazed, and similarly frightened, taking a moment to turn his attention away from the retreating Myriad before speaking in a cool, focused tone. “It’s not my fault that it ran away. I was just approaching you, not hollering and charging at your… thing.”

Lance was frustrated and scared and now abandoned near the border of his enemies with no way of going back and despite how many plans Pidge made up, there wasn’t one for this circumstance. It didn’t matter if it wasn’t logically the stranger’s fault. It didn’t matter that, truthfully, his Myriad had become more trepid and frightened at every foot they took closer to their destination. He was still just as pissed. This vine-swinger had just broken off the most stable connection he had ever had with any elemental ancestors. “You should’ve given some warning, asshat.”

The stranger furrowed his dark brows, glaring straight at him with crossed arms and a tense jaw. “You didn’t give me any warning. What if I ran off because of your wild beast?”

“He’s less of a wild beast than you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“And you don’t know my Myriad or me for that matter. At least I wasn’t the one hanging from a  _ vine  _ like some  _ child _ .”

“At least I wasn’t the one speaking to myself in the middle of nowhere with an expression that looked like I was constipated like a _crazy old witch_.”

Lance squawked, glaring downwards at the man. He groaned loudly, not knowing what to say as a comeback considering that he wasn’t wrong. “This is all your fault.” 

“You should’ve tied it up.”

“I did,” Lance snapped through gritted teeth. “It broke through them.”

“Not my fault you have a creature much stronger than your weak rope-binding skill.”

Lance growled. “How am I supposed to get home now?”

“I don’t know. Walk?”

“Walk dozens of miles before Cena? I have places to be soon and I don’t have the time to afford this. Do you even know who I am?” 

“Do  _ you _ even know who  _ I  _ am?”

Lance took a moment to drag his eyes over his figure, raking them across his features with judgment as he ogled him. 

He couldn’t have been much older than him- probably sixteen or so like himself.

At first, due to his pale complexion, Lance had guessed that he wasn’t Qalbian, but now he realized how much he seemed to fit in. Due to the climate, most Qalbians were high on melanin and had tanned skin, but it wasn’t too uncommon due to the widely mixing cultures and travelers over their history to find one who didn’t. His eyes and dark hair certainly reflected classic Corazonian attributes, though really he couldn’t say for certain considering the fact that races were much less separated into sectors than they were a century ago. 

What had him convinced though was the Qalbian attire similar to his- except it was all in popping warm colors: mostly various shades of red with a black band of fabric at the waist and gold dripping across his waist, wrists, ankles, and neck. He was barefoot.

A tattooed ribbon of blazing golden fire danced along his arm with vermillion and purple hints and a vest matching his harem pants hung halfway down his torso, right above a slim waist that was sculpted with muscle. Now examining the stranger’s form up close, Lance wouldn’t be surprised if he was a dancer or fighter. Or both. He was in shape, with long lean biceps, shaped shoulders, and pecs peeking out from his vest- all defined by various twisting tattoos.

He couldn't even fake the judgement. Lance would never admit it, but he was impressed. He would even consider the man attractive if it weren't for the mess on his head, his sour expression, and ability to ruin his day. 

Despite all of these observations, the prince knew it would be rude to come to conclusions and shut his mouth. The stranger was right. “No, but I have my assumptions.”

“So do I. So why don’t we share them and have a good laugh?” He smirked.

“Isn’t it rude to assume?”

“Isn’t it rude to accuse someone of scaring your creature away?” 

The man was cool and calm, leaning against a tree with a complacent expression at Lance’s growing anger. 

“Fine. I think you’re just some Qalbian street peasant that ran from home who is trying to earn money by dancing. You have northern Corazonian blood in you. Your mageia element is fire. I can see it in your eyes. A Leo. From the sun. Youngest child. And your hairstyle- long in the back and short in the front?- it’s just terrible. It’s probably why you have low self-esteem issues.”

The stranger's eyes widened and at first Lance believed that he must’ve been spot on, but then he burst into laughter, leaning against the tree and practically choking. He didn’t even try to cover it up. The smug  _ bastard.  _ “Nope. Not a single part of that is correct.”

“What is correct then?”

A widening smirk. He seemed to be enjoying this- his Byzantine toying with him-, unaware of the fury and exasperation the royal felt. “Oh wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Well then, do you think you can guess any better than me?”

It was Lance’s turn to be examined this time. Mr. I’m-so-smug pushed himself off of the trunk of the tree and began circling him like a predator would to his prey, scrutinising him from head to toe. While he had remained unaffected by Lance’s staring, the prince felt himself squirm slightly despite himself. He was the higher up here. He shouldn’t have felt so  _ naked  _ in front of this random stranger. 

Then the stranger stopped right in front of Lance’s face, leaning in to look into his eyes. His dark violet eyes bore into his and for a split second Lance was sure he could see vermillion flames spark in them, chasing away the darkness in them. They were like his brother’s eyes but even fiercer- dark and bright at the same time. Almost black in some areas and partially golden in the light. If he wasn’t a fire-user, he had to be able to control lightning at least. Either that or he was a liar.

Lance felt uncomfortable to say the least, even more so when Mr. I’m-so-smug-and-have-confusing-purple-eyes leaned in to say, “I think you’re uneasy right now.”

“That’s all?” Lance gulped, glaring as his cheeks burned in embarrassment. 

“You haven’t had your elemental awakening yet and  _ this _ -” he said, letting his gaze roam down and back up, “-isn’t you. You’re trying to be something you’re not.”

The prince was for once thankful for his teachers. At least now he knew how to pull off a poker face. The stranger was more observant and intuitive than he had originally credited him for. He underestimated him.  “That’s a lame guess. Not very specific. Just safe.” 

“Just correct." Dangerously correct. "Look, I can’t guess who you are when you don’t even know yourself.”

“Well, you’re wrong,” Lance huffed. 

“Oh really?” Sir Terrible Hairstyle cocked an eyebrow. “Then what were you doing here?”

“Meditating.”

“Who grunts and scrunches their face while they meditate?”

“I do. It’s just how I focus.”

“Uh-huh…” Prince Day Ruiner droned, his unimpressed expression dripping with exasperation. “What kind of mageia powers do you have to have to need _that_ much focus?”

“A rare one, thank you very much.”

“Right… and what may that element be?”

“Oh,  _ wouldn’t you like to know _ ,” Lance repeated cooly. His facade of confidence was sky-rocketing to its previous heights and now his smugness destroyed Lord Jackass’s to a pulp. 

Lord Jackass was Lance’s now decided nickname for him. It stuck. Now his smirk cracked and dissolved into a frown, his eyebrows furrowing as he glared daggers of fire at him. “Actually,  _ no _ .” All previous playfulness to his tone had vanished, leaving a bite to it. He hadn’t expected Lance to stick out so far. “I couldn’t care less about who you are.”

“Then why did you take a guess?”

“Because I enjoy being correct.”

Lance spotted her out of the corner of his eye- a glimpse of large white and black feathers, tanned skin, and dark brown hair. A whoosh. He stepped forward, leering at the stranger with all the cockiness in the world. “And I enjoy not being in the presence of jackasses like you, Fireboy.” 

“Hey, fire isn’t my-” then Lord Jackass was stunned into silence as Lance’s feet left the ground. Lucina lifted her brother by the waist in a harsh, sudden, and sweeping motion. 

Though the prince felt the wind embrace him and settled into his sister’s disappointed silence, he couldn’t help but focus on one thing. It wasn’t the lack of communication with Ignatius or the failed journey but the purely human expression of the stranger he last saw as he was dragged away. Amazed and eyes alight- not with anger, but with wonder. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started writing this fanfiction at the wrong time. I posted the first chapter and then got wrapped up in school with finals and just generally trying to pass all of my classes. It's the summer now though, and I'm glad to finally have the time to put all of the attention I want into writing this. I'm very excited for this story and have lots of plans.
> 
> With this chapter, I would like to formally apologize for the late update. Hopefully I will get the next one up soon, and, if not, I can at least guarantee that it will be long.
> 
> Criticism is appreciated. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!


	3. Lifeless and Silent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And, for once, he felt that everything was going to be okay.
> 
> Well, mostly everything.
> 
> -Or-
> 
> In other words, a boring transition chapter starring angst, Space Dad disappointment, and war.

_-Lance-_

Nothing was okay.

Lance's closest chance to discovering his element and getting in contact with his elemental ancestors had been ruined. His trip to the border didn’t even solve his problem of desiring such; It only made it stronger. And that damn stranger had just ruined his day.

Now his sister’s aura of disappointment was too much to bear and he couldn’t even attempt to escape it because he was at least a klavos high and, unlike his two older half-siblings, he had no wings- not only because of their varied genetics but because of Lance’s mageia problem.

Lucina’s unspoken words were thunderous, whipping around them in the tides of wind with her silver hair.

Due to the roaring of the wind against them and the fact that Lucina was so angry she probably would’ve dropped the boy if she began to dive into it, they remained this way until they had reached the palace.

As the tips of their toes met the thick glass surface of Lance’s balcony, he spoke up.

“How did you know?”

“Pidge.”

“Did she explain?”

“I didn’t need an explanation,” she snapped. Her eyes threatened and flashed her mageia powers, her charcoal irises turning golden and cat-like. Electricity through her drifting hair- which faded downwards from her ebony roots into a silver created by the use of her power over the years- and between her web of dark eyelashes like lightning might do amongst a string of metal rods as her eyes went wide, eyebrows spiking. “I’m furious with you.”

“I know. I could tell,” Lance said, cradling the nail marks his sister had left from carrying him.

Lucina sighed and it was like a thousand winds had rushed out of her in a cloud- not because it was cold outside (it was rarely ever even chilly in Solera) but because it was hot in her body with all of the electricity flowing through her veins like they do through wires. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her eyes fell.

A new wave of emotions flooded through him and he felt like a dam. His words came out like a rushing waterfall. “We aren’t as close as we used to be, Lucina.”

“Are you planning on doing it again?”

Lance searched her face. Him and Lucina had their falling out after his Kamani ceremony and she wasn’t one that he necessarily believed he could trust, no matter how much he still loved and looked up to her. Things had changed, but that didn’t mean he wanted them to remain this way.

The tides would change again. He knew this, looking at her softening features and honest eyes, which had returned to their gentle darkness.

“I… I think so,” he whispered. His words tripped but he didn’t care. More than anything he wanted to be able to laugh again with his sister instead of remaining in this state of tenseness and clipped sentences.

“Is there more to this?” She glanced up, expression pleading.

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. “Are you sure that you want to follow up with whatever you are planning?”

“More sure than anything.”

“Then I will let you continue. I will let you return, with my help each time. But you must tell me the truth one day. And you must let me be involved. I need to ensure your safety as one of your royal guards.”

A sea of relief washed over Lance and he smiled, agreeing to the conditions. Though he had a lot to forgive his sister for, this would guarantee the possibility of returning to the border easily.

He watched his sister leap onto the marble and diamond parapet before shooting into the thin clouds before him, the ground klavoses below. As she spiraled downwards in a flickering ball of light, he caught sight of flocks of avians, messenger bubbles, Shooting Suns, Dragonbirds, Phoenixes, golden griffins, and gem faeries approaching the palace as the brazen sunlight hit them against the bright blue sky, looking like the glittering stars he had imagined for so long amongst the surface of the oceans he always ran to. And, for once, he felt that everything was going to be okay.

Well, mostly everything.

The main thing that wasn’t going to be okay was the reason as to why he felt like everything was going to be okay. It was a paradox.

He had only felt this now after going to the border and caving in on his desires. It wasn’t necessarily a good sign though that he was so excited to return.

Lance sighed, sinking to the translucent floor. He let everything dissolve like soap in his brain, feeling it anchor to the bottom, simultaneously making his fears rise to the surface.

Over the generations, Solerans had adapted and grown more able to handle the pulling of their planet’s fifteen minor moons and three major ones. Though some occasionally fell with what was called the Plague of Artemis, it was still quite rare with their medical technology and strict provisions. When it did happen, it usually happened to those who were in poor conditions and were unable to afford what it took to avoid catching the illness or who were close to the border.

Lance, however, who had a whole kingdom separating him from the border and was one of the most wealthy and heavily guarded people in Solera, was almost certain that he had the early symptoms of the plague.  _ Like the waves of the seas in the North and West, the moons seemed to pull at him, tugging and tugging, tempting like a wicked siren with a gorgeous mask and melodic voice. _  But he wasn’t showing any of the other symptoms, and it had been years since they had first started. If he truly had it, he should have passed away by now, turning into seafoam on their white beaches or a frozen statue of ice on the edges of Lunae.

Still, he felt the anxiety bubble. He needed to keep this clandestine or otherwise he would be exposed as either sick or crazy to the public.

What scared him the most though was the fact that he didn’t care about being sick or crazy. He didn’t care if he had the plague. All he knew was that he didn’t think he could live without obtaining his desires and that he didn’t think he would mind suffering if it meant seeing real stars for once in his life. His love for the mysteries of Lunae even outweighed his wish to discover his element.

He believed that the part of his brain that was supposed to keep him alive must’ve been a broken machine, for he wasn’t suicidal but had been warned his whole life that he could become lifeless and silent if he followed the moons’ call and yet he couldn’t feel an ounce of care.

The only thing he did care about was the fact that flashes of mischievous smirks and impossibly violet eyes of fire still burned in his mind.

~

- _Keith-_

Nothing was okay. 

It was  _ nothing _ like they said it was and  _ everything _ they said it wasn’t. They were liars- not even equivocators but pure perjurers. The government Keith had been taught to be unquestioningly faithful to was one that consisted of  _ liars.  _ His father and brother and mother who had taken him in when he was an orphan were crooked cheats who held the truth from not only their people who were fighting their bloody war but from their own  _ son.  _

That hadn’t surprised him. He always knew his family was hiding something. He always knew they were cunning three-headed siren serpents that may have been able to commit extraordinary good deeds like taking in a young peasant boy into their sumptuous lavish lives but simultaneously manipulated the naive boy into becoming a sheep for their hidden agenda. They surreptitiously convinced him that they were royals of virtue when they really sat on unscrupulous thrones of bones and blood; wore crowns of greed, power-hungriness, and cruelty; and held sharp silver scepters of secrets and propaganda. 

“Prince Akira,” a commanding voice buzzed in his ear- pesky like a midnight hornfly. Under the pale paint on his back, his sangjing birth markings thrummed, the ebony thread pulsing irritatingly each time his royal guard tried to contact him. 

Keith chose to ignore it, even when the voice on the other side gritted, “I know you can hear me.” The young disguised prince was even tempted to take the annoying bug away from his eardrums. It only added to this new brash cacophony of sounds and all he wanted was to pretend like he could stay here forever. Across the border. In Solera.

Those words alone were hard to believe. He was in  _ Solera _ . The territory of his enemies of all places. A place forbidden to him and practically every other Lunaean on the planet. 

But at least it wasn’t Lunae. Now suddenly aware of all of the lies that had been glinting in the corner crevices of his sight, he didn’t know how he could ever possibly return. Especially when this new world before his eyes was so utterly breathtaking. Ineffable. 

He couldn’t focus on any one thing. It all hit him in a marvelous and overwhelming storm, the only thing keeping him grounded being his shaky breath and the rush of adrenaline flooding his veins from the novelty of it all, the infuriating man (or, rather,  _ boy _ ) he ran into, and the fact that he was committing treason just about now. He couldn’t even process his anger or the possible consequences of his impulsivity because all around him he was met with beautiful vivid colors he had rarely ever seen in Lunae and more wildlife near this one lake than he could even imagine being in the entirety of a whole Lunaean village. There were singing and warmth and light and light and light. Instead of beads of scintilla bouncing off a thin web of gossamer, there was the largest star he had ever seen in his entire life in the sky- which he could only assume was the sun. It was big and bright with the candescence of a thousand stars and a half a dozen worshipping followers, planets, orbiting between it and him. 

And he loved it. For once in his life, he felt at peace. Lake Amani fits its name. Perhaps he didn’t know what invisible force had pushed him to the border all these years but he did start to understand  _ why _ it had. 

Even after giving in and closing the propinquity between him and his desires, the longing to be in Solera was still ever yet sempiternal. 

Keith sighed, feeling the sun heat his skin without burning his flesh off like he had been taught it would. For years everyone had said that it was dangerous to cross the border without being killed painfully in a matter of minutes. He was glad it was a lie. 

“Prince Akira, I know where you are.”

‘Yeah right,’ the young man thought to himself, watching the two-headed bronze birds, living flames of fire above him, and the rolling white stone creatures around him warily (In a world he knew nothing about, anything could kill him). There was no way his personal royal guard knew where he was. He had surgically removed his own tracker that morning- It was a bloody pain and it was going to take a few days to heal before it scarred without the help of the medical staff at the capital’s castle. If he decided to seek treatment, he would have to explain what he had done. Nothing passed without questioning. 

“Akira.”

‘I swear if he says another-’

“You know this one-way device probably isn’t a private line. So perhaps this isn’t the best place for me to speak to you about that one Galran lady that caught your eye. You really don’t want your secrets to be spilled here.” 

Never mind. He knew where he was. This was Shiro’s roundabout way of saying,  _ ‘I would tell you where you are but your parents’ spies would probably overhear us and then slaughter us both in our sleep so I’d rather not’.  _ After all, Shiro knew that Keith wasn’t attracted to females and really wasn’t interested in pursuing such trivial matters as love. Hence, it made the perfect code-talk for the two to use. 

“Please come home, Keith.”  _ Keith.  _ Shiro really knew how to convince the young prince. He was the only one to call him by that name in the palace and every time it touched him a little bit more. Especially now, when his formal title had never felt so foreign.

There was no doubt that he had successfully passed the government with this meticulously planned ruse of his, but of course, it was impossible to get around his highly adept and astute best friend and guard. He knew him all too well. 

A lissome, summery zephyr danced through his hair, creating a tintinnabulation between the hanging bell fruit and metal bushes. And reluctantly Keith fought the wafture of tides and went back across the border for two reasons only: 1.) Him, Takashi Shirogane, who he had long considered to be his true brother; and 2.) If Lunae had been lying about these things, Solera must’ve been doing the same exact thing. Neither side had been telling the truth for decades. 

-

Keith stood there, terrified, halfway across the threshold into his quarters. The automatic door started to beep, signifying that something was standing in it, preventing it from closing. The prince hardly noticed it though when Shiro awaited there before him, an expression foreign to his face infecting his usually gentle eyes and kind features like some parasitic plant taking over a native population as a weed might do. The look didn’t suit him, making it feel all the more worse than the downward point of his furrowed brows or tense jaw suggested. There was a fire in his dark grey eyes and it wasn’t one of burning determination but of something icier- bitter fury, solemnity, fear, sternness, and disappointment.

There Shiro was, standing in the foyer, leaning against the wall for support since it was against protocol- and hence illegal- to sit in the prince’s quarters without permission. For his “well being”. As if his negligent family really cared for his  _ “well being” _ . The rule was only there to imprison him even more and give Shiro more chances to trip up and be executed. 

His lips were pulled into a straight line, his teeth most likely grinding against each other like tight metal gears. The wrinkles increased above the bridge of his nose as he stared straight at Keith with unwavering eyes. 

“Good afternoon, Prince Akira,” the guard said in a warm and welcoming voice despite his contrasting expression. For both the bugs in his quarters and to hit Keith in waves of implied sarcasm. “Shall we go to the gardens?”

“Of course, Shirogane,” Keith said in a flat tone. His eyes searched his friend’s face. “Let’s go.”

They didn’t stop in the gardens. Instead, Shiro yanked the boy suddenly into an architectural crevice in one of the palace walls when they had entered one of the few camera blind spots. In the darkness, Keith made out two doors on either side of the small entranceway. One was a door that opened up to a glass-lined hallway that led to the stables while the other led to a storage room mostly used for storing garden supplies. 

The latter was where Shiro took him.

There were no bugs or cameras in the room according to Shiro’s data- which mostly consisted of spied on conversations, experience, bug trackers, and stolen maps of the palace.

Once the door shut, Shiro whipped his head around and glared at the younger man. “We only have seven minutes. Max. Follow me.” 

Then Shiro crouched and brushed his fingers across the polished floor before tracing a familiar image. A symbol. The Soleran Sun. 

In response, the rows of ebony polished diamond tiles lowered at varying heights until a stairway was before their eyes, plunging into the darkness below. 

Keith followed him downwards, hearing each tile ascend again as his foot left them, closing the two in the dimly lit room below. Well, it really was more of a pit than a room. The floor was uneven with three different levels, the air was damp and unventilated, and the walls were less wall and more earth and stone with ancient jagged pipes and rusted metal twisting their necks out to get a breath of air from the surface. It was oddly shaped and yet an organized system that only Shiro could manage to create. 

“We don’t have the time for me to explain all of this,” Shiro said, gesturing to their surroundings when he noticed Keith’s curious glance and dark raised brow.

The boy shut his mouth. 

Shiro sucked in a breath that rattled in his lungs like an old dying machine trying to perform it’s destined tasks. “Do you know what you’ve just done?”

Keith narrowed his eyes. “I know, Shiro. I committed treason.”

“ _ Treason _ , Keith. It’s not just that simple word that just rolled off of your tongue. This has major consequences.”

“And this is coming from someone who hasn’t committed treason? I’m pretty sure that you’re in no position to-”

“-That makes me in the best position to be telling you this. I know the price. Do you?”

“Death. Yeah, I know. And I don’t care, Shiro.”

“There are worse punishments than death,” Shiro said. And Keith understood the implication. Shiro had experienced punishments worse than death. The broken…  _ things _ on his back and metal arm were visible testimonies to it. 

A tense silence fell between them and Shiro’s piercing glare, stone face, and towering anger settled into something even worse- disappointment. His features softened and Keith had to shift his gaze beyond him because the guilt was starting to flood in too suddenly. 

“I know the consequences, Shiro. I know that I was impulsive. But I wasn’t caught and I don’t regret what I’ve done.” Keith’s eyes snapped back up, now feeling a breeding sense of anger and determination go loose like the stranger’s creature who freed itself from its ropes across the border. “You have always told me to follow what I believe is right. And nothing has felt more right to me in my entire life.”

Shiro paused, digesting his words and glancing back and forth as if he were debating something in his head. “It feels right to me too,” he finally said. His voice was low, barely above a whisper but also full of conviction. For a flash second in their tiny escape from Lunae, the armoured royal guard expressed something else- some bit of light. The corners of his thin lips rose slowly like what he imagined the sun did at dawn between the borders, blowing the dark away into slanted corners. It was small but there and bright. Pride.

“Did you know the truth?” Keith asked, hesitant.

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Shiro sighed. “They told me that they would kill you if I told you. I also was trying to protect you for as long as possible from your urges. Heaven knows what you would’ve done if you found this out just a couple years ago.”

“What  _ is  _ the truth, Shiro? Have the things we’ve been taught been all one big lie or am I… like you?”

He bowed his head. “Both.”

Keith didn’t feel shock. It was more like he was being told something he subconsciously knew his whole life. It was like finally remembering a word lost on the tip of your tongue. And Shiro knew this. 

Then Shiro embraced him and for once in Keith’s life, everything felt like it was going to be okay.

 

 

Well, mostly everything. 

Shiro knew that he couldn’t stop the prince from crossing the border again so instead he made Keith promise that he would notify him everytime he left and let him have some role in the plans. Since he was practically already a dead man, he was willing to spend the last of his living days helping the person he considered his brother find happiness and discover the truth, which would be useful in his position of power. 

What Keith didn’t find okay was the blatant fact that he didn’t have the supposed Plague of Apollo. Nor was he set aflame by the sun. 

What he didn’t find okay was the fact that Shiro had endured this much. That he was seen as the creation of a witch. That he knew the truth and it disgusted him. That Shiro would risk his life for him and yet he still recklessly planned to continue this. That Keith knew that he, himself, could die, or worse- Shiro could be executed, and yet he felt more afraid if he didn’t chase the sun. 

That his brother, Prince Lotor, slept just a few halls down, which wasn’t far enough away.

That he felt his thoughts wandering back to not only the Myriad, foreign creatures, and wonders he saw, but also the sunkist boy in the woods. That he didn’t feel anger until he caught himself thinking about him yet again.

“The meeting will begin in five minutes,” a voice cracked through a sea of static. 

Sitting in the makeshift hut he had built over the years inside the skeleton of a zanoril with scrap parts he had scavenged for across the war-torn territory, Keith recalled one of the ancient books he read- well,  _ watched _ considering the fact that it was in another language but luckily there were images to guide him- hidden away on his secret shelf behind one of the walls in his private (as they said) quarters. He thought of his position in terms of the story. 

Solera was a beauty. Lunae was the ugly beast that trapped her. And in between them was a blood red rose- both pleasant in scent and young bloom and wretched in thorns and age as if the two empires had a child- counting down the time until peace had to be made or all would be lost. With every soft and fragile petal that fell and withered into a wrinkly brown corpse, the more both sides lost. The more the people of the castle began to lose themselves. The more the townspeople lived kingless with no memory of what had happened. 

Keith would probably never know the ending of the book since the last pages were torn out and it was older than the war itself, but he felt as if what he had seen and the lack of ending fit his situation. He would probably never know the ending of this infinite battle either. 

He swore at the witch who had cast such a terrible curse years ago and he sunk against a giant rib peeking into the walls, feeling like one of the servants trapped in the wicked castle for something beyond his control, only to die an inanimate object in a dead place and who doesn’t even know what it’s like beyond the castle borders. Becoming an  _ it _ to the beast. 

He didn’t care that, with what he knew now, Solera was only beautiful at face value. It was the thing that would save him from this fate. 

Here, sitting at the center of the withering rose, Keith felt his chest restrict as if a cobra was trying to strangle its next meal. He could see the ticking life clock of their planet before them. Like the largest moon in the sky, it waxed and waned, the borders of the face of the clock shrinking in on itself, soon to become a full moon of nothingness. 

Between his legs, he toyed and tinkered with the wireless radio tapped into the signal of one of the bugs in a court hall- somewhere he wasn’t allowed during meetings because a mutt (even a royal one) was “too impure and inferior” to hold such power. Keith knew the truth. They were scared of him. Unlike his brother, he wasn’t a servile sheep who submitted his silver loyalty to a sea of serpents. 

The radio was old. He doubted that anyone living today would know how to use it or even what it was by just glancing at it, but Keith had done enough tinkering in his curious lifetime that he had figured out what the device was and how he could fix it in order to be able to manipulate it. It was boxy and large, with newer replacement parts he had welded and screwed in to make the corpse whole again. It wasn’t what it used to be- the Soleran symbols chipped off and the bright pieces replaced with harsh dark metal that scrapes the eye. Like the structure above him, it was simply a skeleton- a foundation of what once was.

Old and Soleran technology was safe. If someone tracked the solar-powered device, they would find it in the bridge between borders. They would believe that it was the usual Soleran spy trying to get information and he would get away with being the real spy. Also, because it was so old, all of the modern day trackers would likely not have the ability to track it down. These radio signals were ancient technology. 

With some updates and tweaking, Keith had been able to make it capable of hacking into the secret bug’s signal. If this were anybody else who wasn’t aware of the palace bugs or didn’t know of their signal codes or wavelengths, they wouldn’t have been able to gain access to it or pass the high levels of security. However, by adding a false royal Lunaean “stamp” as they called it- a specific signal that was like a secret knock on a door-, he was able to get by unnoticed. Keith had been raised with a world hidden from him and a curious personality that would seek answers no matter what it took. The empire had created a spy against them. A royal one in close proximity to answers and with access to resources. One who had grown exploring the palace until he knew it like his own name. 

The empire had a reason to fear him.

A cold wave of deep fanfares shot Keith’s ears, making him wince. “Now entering- Prince Lotor the I, first in line to the throne of the Capital Kingdom, Kuutsuki, and to the emperorship of the Lunaean Empire. All bow.” Of course it was his brother. No one entered more dramatically than him. If only he had access to the cameras in the room- then he could snicker at how he pompously walked as if he were a god, his flowing silver hair surprisingly not meeting the length of his ego, his highfalutin mannerisms, and the supercilious way his chin tried to reach the stars. 

All conversation was instantly cut off. Keith could feel the fear in the air as if it were a humid fog creeping across the shore. “Good night, my comrades. Before we begin, I would like to thank our court and generals-” Keith zoned out that part, not wanting to hear him shape the mask of politeness he always wore. 

He returned his attention once the formalities were over and the meeting had commenced. “As you all know, my father, Emperor Zarkon, is currently visiting the South-Eastern border Kingdom of Rydliouka-Seupeideu to discuss war strategies with the generals and settle peasant uprisings between the Rydlioukans and Seupeideuans- originally known as the Xins. We are here to discuss what we can do in the capital to calm the incident from a distance.” 

Another voice cut in. Keith recognized him as an intelligence officer. “One recent update from the Seupeideuan side was that Serdtses, Simjangians, and Kokorons have gathered together to write a formal plea and a statement to the Royal Family. Specifically, to umm… strangely, Prince Akira. They will be releasing it to the public tomorrow-”

Before Keith could process this new profound information, his brother cut in. “No such thing happened,” he said cooly. 

“But sir-”

“-Let it be known that you were given false information. I don’t want this spreading to the public. At all costs, shut that trifecta down.”

“ _ Oh _ ,” the officer said. “Of course, sir. My apologies, your highness.”

One of the nobles spoke up. “By all means, your highness, Prince Akira is the second born. He is a mutt and has not yet, even at his age, had his elemental awakening. He is virtually powerless. Why are they trying to speak out to him specifically? What is the danger in that?”

“That’s exactly the point, Ulaz. Prince Akira has no power. And I don’t want anyone in the empire to think anything else. If they think that he has the ability to do what they want, then they are sadly mistaken. Besides, the longer Prince Akira believes that himself, the better off we are.”

“Yes, indeed. Thank you, your highness.” 

“We must prevent word spreading to the other Kingdoms of the uprisings or otherwise we might have to deal with another massive revolt. Do whatever you can, generals, to shut everything down. I don’t care what you do, just do it,” Lotor commanded. “Tell them this: We are winning the war with the Solerans, my friends. It is best that we finish it quickly and we can’t do that without the loyalty of the entire empire. Spread the word that the shortages are due to massive Soleran raids and that it will be settled shortly if they help us continue to fight. Pain is necessary in times of war, but it need not be long if we put all of our energy and resources into the battle. The emperor is out there now, preaching to the people the truth. All is well and victory is on the horizon due to the efforts of my brilliant father. Love will win against the hate of the Solerans. We are all suffering together, but that is only so we will be able to live the richest and happiest of lives in the near future.”

“Some of that is false though, sir,” a newcomer said. There was a long silence and then a few chuckles. Keith could only guess that the other people in the room were incredulous about what he had just said. As if they were in on some joke. 

“ _ Exactly _ . All that matters is that  _ they  _ think that it's true.” But it wasn’t a joke. They were incredulous because the newcomer was new and he didn’t know of the darkness he had been in for his entire life. All of it was a lie. 

Ripping white static. The signal had been cut. “Damn old technology,” Keith swore, kicking the radio. He watched it tumble until it hit the metal desk he made with a thunk. There it sat, lifeless and silent, like the zanoril that caged the outside out. Like the desolate bridge of war-torn land that stretched for miles between the border walls. Like the old Shiro, who had truly died when those lifeless and silent monsters had tore and sliced and plucked and scraped and skinned and chained and burned away at his beautiful heavenly wings until they were a creation of a devil. Like the stars in the sky and the stars on Lotor’s skin and the stars near Keith’s heart. Like everything around him. Like everything he knew. It was all dead. 

They were things that he knew would die though. It was like when his beloved ill teacher had passed away. He knew it was coming- the doctors said it would- and there was a sense of knowing for weeks to come. Perhaps it was a mostly subconscious knowing, but it was still there nonetheless. But despite knowing- despite the bright flickers of apprehension- he still shed tears and wracked sobs in the darkness of his room when he received word that it had finally happened. Having known does not mean that he had processed the emotions that came with it. It still hurt. It still had torn and sliced and plucked and scraped and skinned and chained and burned away at something heavenly until it was a creation of a devil.

So, despite knowing, somewhere in his mind, for years to come that, on the horizon, everything he knew would die, he still felt the pain. Perhaps he wasn’t shocked, but he grieved the deaths of the blissfully happy sunbeams that ended up only being lies according to the coroner at their autopsies. 

Yet there was still something hidden there in his head. And he feared a sudden death more than an expected one. His conscience vibrated between the state of knowing and not knowing- too fast for him to pick up on the knowing. Something was almost there. And almost not. All at once.

For now, he began to process his emotions as he had done when he had heard about his ill teacher’s death. 

He shed tears for an expected death as he raced back to the border on his self-engineered hoverbike. He wasn’t gifted the time to control the fire inside. In order to prevent more deaths from happening, he would have to cross the wall at the Rydliouka-Seupeideun border and find the truth- before the military got to them and made them lifeless and silent. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and for the support you have given me! Have a great day, everyone.
> 
> I hope to update again in a few weeks. However, this month, I will be going on a vacation and will later be moving across the nation I live in. Since I'll be doing over 40 hours of driving total though, I'll have plenty of time to write so hopefully, it becomes a reality.


	4. Feast of Hearts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cakes and lectures. Dolls and drowning. Higanbanas and leos. And a feast on hearts.
> 
> WARNING: This chapter includes graphic content that may not be suitable for some readers. Violence, death, mild gore, and injuries are involved. Reader discretion is advised.

_ -Lance- _

 

“Lance, don’t you think you’re being a bit ridiculous?” Hunk asked, biting into one of the muffins he had baked. He brushed his broad hands off on his apron, gazing at his best friend with gentle caramel eyes. 

Lance regretted ever telling his friends what had occurred that day at Lake Amani by the border. He had disclosed almost every detail- minus the fact that the stranger had made some accurate guesses about him in fear of making the two teenagers worry about him or become cautious about him returning. 

Either way, here Lance sat, being lectured in the palace kitchen. 

The trio had a tradition of sneaking into the kitchen during Ypnos or in between lessons to bake treats and devour them over conversation. It was always mostly Hunk who did the baking since he was the best at it and both Pidge and Lance had failed to learn despite years of Hunk patiently attempting to teach them. Hence, while Hunk worked his magic, the two others would be involved in another activity, which usually involved bickering. Though as the years went by, their visits together would shorten as the three became more busy- Hunk with his cooking, palace duties, music lessons, writing, and engineering; Pidge with her studies, secret experiments, gardening, inventions, and technological discoveries; Lance with his archery, training, performing arts, languages, and lessons with Allura preparing them to be the next rulers of the empire- the three always found time for each other. 

Pidge and Hunk would tutor Lance on his science and math based subjects, Hunk and Lance would tutor Pidge in language and the arts, and Pidge and Lance would help Hunk with history and combat training. 

Together, they would teach Lance and Hunk’s younger siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews in the classrooms of the palace. Pidge would read books to them in a crystal bubble in the courtyard as it rained and they were bestowed with the lagniappe of petrichor, Lance humorously acting out the characters. Hunk would share his poetry and pastiche with a flush to his cheeks over his sweets. They would talk of love and mageia and dreams and knowledge and secrets and the war. They had deep and intellectual conversations and light, seemingly meaningless, comedic ones. 

They would tease Hunk about his bashfulness, Pidge about her height, and Lance about his dramatics. Lance would admit his attraction for both men and women and anything in between. Pidge would admit her lack of attraction for anyone. Hunk would admit his long living attraction for a Balmaran girl named Shay.

Lance and Hunk would dance and sing across the kitchen and Pidge would roll her eyes but secretly love it. They would have food fights and pillow fights and mageia battles. They would laugh till their bellies hurt or cry into the embraces of each other. Pidge would form a bed of plants and they would cuddle and tell jokes in order to help Lance forget his inner turmoil about being emperor, about Allura, and about his mageia. Pidge and Hunk would present their inventions and discoveries while Lance cheered. Hunk would play the ancient painted ukulele or drums he had received from his grandfather. Lance would play the guitar. Pidge would record them. They would watch terrible movies, play board games and video games, make art, climb trees, sneak into the library to research and wonder when everyone else was sleeping, go surfing, and work together at the pilot simulations as a flight crew. 

It was here, with the three of them together, that they could all forget about their problems. It was their own little corner of their vast empire. 

And that’s why Lance came here first after his conversation with Lucina. Bubbling with emotions, he rushed to his friends to mope, complain, and rant about his experiences at the border. He hadn’t snapped out of his state of rage and disappointment for days. 

“Oh he’s definitely being ridiculous,” Pidge muttered. She leaped off from her position on the counter, snagging a glazed lemon flower into her pocket before looting a berry off of Lance’s ice cream-filled cinnamon cake. 

“Hey!” Lance growled, swatting at the Spathian princess and reaching for the berry with grabby hands. Giving up as the girl plopped it into her mouth, he slumped down into his seat, continuing his stubborn pouting. “I’m not being ridiculous! That guy was the lord of all jackasses. He acted so high and mighty- as if  _ he _ were the royal one there! The nerve!”

“The guy didn’t know who you were. To him, you just looked like another peasant,” Hunk explained calmly. 

Lance grumbled. “So? You shouldn’t just treat people like that!”

“Uh-huh…” Pidge deadpanned. “I think this guy reminds me of someone.”

“Who?” The boy’s eyes lit up in wonder, as if there was a possibility that this guy was some evil person they knew. 

Pidge facepalmed. “You, doofus.”

“What?!” Lance exclaimed, incredulous. 

“You are angry because this stranger insulted you and acted above you but you were also a stranger to him who insulted him and acted above him,”  Hunk said. “And you were the one who instigated it. Really, getting mad at someone for just being there and being curious?”

“He scared away my myriad and ruined my chances with communicating to the elemental ancestors!”

“It was an accident, Lance. Then you continued to act like he was some Lunaean soldier who had killed your ancestors. Not cool, dude.”

Lance slumped his head onto the table with a thunk. “I know. But I’m so frustrated.”

“Stop sulking,” Pidge said. “You’ll have another chance at speaking to Ignatius.”

“That’s the thing, guys! I don’t even think it was Ignatius. The voice had said these confusing things like, ‘You are in the right place for the wrong reasons, Prince Lancelot’ and ‘Ignatius isn’t here, young one’. It was weird.”

For a few seconds, Pidge and Hunk shared a questioning look that melted into concern and sympathy. Beside each other, the two created a stark juxtaposition between their appearances- unlike Pidge, Hunk was broad shouldered, buff, towering, and the width of both Pidge and Lance combined. He was dark skinned with a round face, thick brows, full cheeks, and wide smiling eyes. 

The two realized where their friend’s frustration had come from. Hunk took the lead, resting one of his big gentle hands on the prince’s shoulder as he sat beside him. “Lance, you’ll figure it out. This is still a great accomplishment and we are both proud and excited for you, buddy. We’ll get you back there to investigate what happened. Even if it isn’t Ignatius, you must have a connection to  _ someone _ there. This is the biggest lead we have gotten for years!” 

Lance sighed, continuing to express his worries. “I felt it. The mageia. But I was thinking about the sun and so I’m really confused. If it isn’t Ignatius, who is it?”

“Perhaps it is another one of the elemental ancestors of the sun. They tend to gather together,” Pidge said logically. She stood beside him, resting her elbow on his head. “What matters though, Lance, is that whomever you were communicating with told you that you were in the right place. Maybe you haven’t figured out your element, but we’ve narrowed it down and now have a location to base our mageia investigation on.”

Lance remained silent for a few moments before lifting his head, a glowing grin flooding his face. “Thanks guys,” he said. 

—

It wasn’t until a month later that Lance was able to actually return to Lake Amani. 

The weeks had passed in lessons from his teachers, tutoring, combat training, archery classes, and his royal studies with Princess Allura, in which the two spent hours preparing for their duty as the future empress and emperor of Solera. With preparations for the royal family’s “Son of the Sun” journey- stretching throughout the kingdoms of the empire: first Almasi, second Taimana-Meretaiaha, third Spathi (where the solstice festival would occur), fourth the province of Puʻuwai, and then finally to Emperor Melchor Alarico Uxio Inacio Reyes McClain’s (the emperor had many names) home kingdom of Corazon where a great ball would take place- the palace was sent into a wild frenzy. For these reasons, Lance couldn’t find a single spare moment to slip away to the border, especially with Lucina busy with guard and battalion training and Pidge and Hunk occupied with a new fascinating discovery.

Lance had to admit that he was worried. With only until the ball in Corazon, where his E nilikíosi ceremony would be held on his 17th birthday, to discover his element, Lance felt as if there was a dam before him, the water slamming against it borders and threatening to pour over the edge. As the days went by, it was like watching a life glass lose its final grains of sand to the bottom chasm, waiting for death to come. Though most life glasses were stored away in a guarded vault of the palace to prevent mass paranoia, Lance had begged Coran, his and Allura’s royal assistant, to take a peek at his. Coran refused, for it would be against the law, and hence left Lance in the dark, waiting for his passing. The possibilities were endless. He would either die from the Plague of Artemis, be kidnapped by angry citizens and executed in order to prevent him from ruling, be banished to the bridge between empires where he would be captured and tortured by the Lunaeans, or he would have to run away from the kingdom in shame, only to wither away in a pool of his own misery and questioning insanity as he was shredded by his own kind- Leos. Many promised to guard him but he couldn’t be protected forever. He would have to defend himself, and without mageia, that seemed virtually impossible.

At his Enilikioski ceremony, he would have to publicly reveal his powers (The event would not only have a large front-row audience, but would also be recorded and put on live television with no censoring, interruptions, or editing. - which are always discovered before or at the ceremony for every recorded case in the history of mageia. If your mageia element and other powers weren’t revealed by one’s 17th birthday, then the person was marked as “broken”- a rare thing that only occurred with those back when mageia was first discovered and introduced thousands of years earlier, those with birth defects, those with the plague, those who were believed to be highly scarce reincarnated witches and sorcerers (the births of them occurred decades between each other) who were being punished for their crimes in their previous lifetime, and those who were the creations of Lunaean witches or sorcerers who attempted to create a mix breed between the Solerans and Lunaeans and failed, only to be ditched across the border to hide the evidence. Lance was none of these. He had been tested years before to try and determine the reason as to why he had not had his awakening yet. That didn’t stop the people from assuming that these things applied to him, which was a dangerous truth. Despite his tests being published publicly and the truth about his lack of an awakening being sheathed from the citizens of the empire, rumors still escaped and groups of conspiracists had formed, preaching that the government lied and proclaiming Lance as something wicked. That’s why he had been hidden from the public since his Kamani ceremony- to protect him. The empire hadn’t really seen his face for years. 

Lake Amani was his only hope and he hadn’t received a single word from Pidge, Hunk, or Lucina on their plans to get him there.

Well, that was the case until today- the day before his trip to Spathi. Pidge and Lucina had found him by the water gardens and pool on the roof of his palace quarters in the middle of Ypnos- the time of slumber. It’s where he spent most of the little free time he had. There, he felt at rest. If he couldn’t sleep, it was there that he could finally do so as he watched the rocking of the calming blue water. All of his problems slipped away like seaflower at the bottom of the ocean.

“Lance,” Hunk had whispered tenderly into the warm air, shuffling nervously in his yellow sea lion slippers and turtle speckled silk robe. Pidge- still decked in a black and green glowing oversized hoodie, green boxers, and knee-high cat socks- fidgeted with her holographic laptop and gear beside him while Lucina stood by her side- silent, still, and tense. It seemed like Lucina was the only one who was properly dressed. Her wings hung folded to her back from the holes in her black and white training suit, a sheath of metal arrows tied at her hip and a folded stack of notes tucked into her left combat boot.

With no answer following except the clicking of Pidge’s keyboard, Pidge looked up with dark crescent moons resting on her cheeks from lack of sleep, each holding up her puffy bottom eyelids. Her amber eyes narrowed with exasperation, flickering flecks of green as her mageia threatened to present itself. “ _ Lance. _ ” 

When Lance didn’t answer from the silken hammock he rested on, the young girl repeated his name. This time louder, with an animal-like cacophony of forced and painful throat clearing, stomping, groaning, and whistling soon following.

With each noise from the symphony, a rustle echoed. Then stillness, only soft snores accompanying the silence. 

Lucina was becoming impatient. “ _ LANCE _ ,” she said in her commanding ‘guard tone’. After a moment of no response, the sibling slid over without her socked feet leaving the ground. They dragged behind her, building up the potential energy in her veins. With a surge of electricity shooting from her chest through her spine, she poked her brother, shocking him awake.

Lance, surprised, fell “rather gracefully” (as he would argue later) from the hanging hammock with a groan. “What the fuck?! What was that for, Lucina?”

“You need to get your ass up if you want to go to Lake Amani before you leave for your trip. We won’t be able to make it there from Spathi or Taimana-Meretaiaha in a day’s time of course, so we should go now.”

As Lance wiped at the line of droll from the corner of his mouth and attempted to smooth down his unruly and now standing shocked hair on his head to little avail, he registered his surroundings and the words coming out of Lucina’s mouth. Like most times he woke up near the water, the prince didn’t recall actually journeying there. Sometimes he wondered if he sleep walked. It seemed as if his pull towards the stars and the sea even transcended the barriers of slumber and dreams. 

“Lance, we don’t have time. The cameras will have the repeating footage Pidge set for only so long. You need to get dressed and to the stables,” Hunk said, Pidge crossing her arms. They did the speaking, noticing the lingering tension between the two siblings. 

“How long do I have?” Lance asked, scratching a patch of his exposed stomach.

“You have to be back by the time the dragon’s breath ignites the empire’s life glass once again,” Hunk said.

The prince pondered this, glancing at the ring of fire above the palace. “Six oras?”

Pidge shrugged. “That’s as long as we can cover you for. I may be a genius but I can’t do everything.”

“No, that’s plenty of time. Thanks guys,” he said with his sleep-smothered hoarse voice. He looked pointedly at his friends with a lopsided grin, avoiding eye contact with his sister. 

Pidge cocked a hip to the side, her gaze sly. “Well then, are you coming sleepyhead?” 

“You know my answer, Pidge.” Lance smirked. “Let me go get my bow.”

—

Dressed in similar attire as he had worn when he had previously visited the border, Lance rode his own trusted myriad from the palace stables (to ensure that he wouldn’t be stranded like last time), his midnight blue cloak whipping around him like the waves of the seas as it shielded his appearance from any possible onlookers. His painted and beaded bow hung to his back, the sheath of arrows tied to the myriad’s hip. It was the middle of Ypnos, and hence the most dangerous time of the day. It was necessary that he had some sort of defence. 

Swiftly, he went. Lucina, soaring above with a pair of hellhawk eye-glasses, would give the signal with a bolt of her lightning and Pidge, from her makeshift lab on the roof of Lance’s quarters back at the palace, activated a bridge across the floating islands of the capital each time. Hunk, in the meantime, slipped into the old guard uniform Lance had gifted him one year as a costume, and guarded the halls to Lance’s quarters, a bug in his ear and microphone near his lips so that he could communicate with the others. 

Soon enough, with the help of his crew, Lance and his myriad were descending the transport dragon snakes that carried ones down from the lowest island of the capitol and through the pools of water klavoses below. 

Two oras later and Lance had finally reached Lake Amani. He began his work.

—

Lance felt his Altean markings hum, something wild and alive pulsing through his veins while in close proximity to both the border and the serene water he kneeled by. Eager and hopeful, he ran through the steps he was taught in his youth like it was muscle memory. He saw a scintilla of light, heard a gossamer of something in the distance, and felt his senses expand until he swore he was on the  _ other side _ . On the side of his elemental ancestors, with them, and fully able to communicate. 

But it was lifeless and silent. The light was dim, unlike the sun, and the noise was a rushing susurrous, unlike the sound of a longed voice. 

It occurred to him that he was lost. He had taken a wrong turn and ended up in a different location. He wasn’t where he was trying to get. Despite pulling what he wanted towards him, it was him that ended up being pulled. He had never heard of such an occurrence happening but Lance knew that it was what was supposed to. 

Lance felt out of place. Lance felt like he belonged. Lance felt fractured. Lance was complete. Lance had done something wrong. And yet Lance felt entirely  _ right _ . 

In this dim void, he reached out, attempting to make what he was experiencing tangible. Nothing was there. No one was there. He was isolated, without even a boat to hold him. A scream scraped and tore deep from the prince’s diaphragm and yet it was muffled into nothing. His soul shook like an earthquake but his body remained floating and trapped. Pressure enveloped him- it didn’t feel like chains but instead an embrace that rocked him like a babe. A lullaby was faintly whispered into his ear- 18 simple sweet notes that repeated. But the lack of wrongness was foreign and it terrified him, making him push away from it. He continued to scream. He continued to shake. He continued to try and call out for anyone, anything. 

He continued to try to channel the sun. But the sun was so far away that it felt like a foreign name on his tongue. 

This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. 

There was no Ignatius. There was no sun. There was no fire. 

Nothing. 

Lifeless and silent. Alone and cold. Calm and endless. Gentle and powerful. Peaceful and correct. He was no longer on the edge, but instead, he was drowning. Drowning in mageia. 

Drowning at the bottom of Lake Amani. 

And then drowning in violet eyes. 

This time, when he screamed, it choked the air in his sound. When he moved, he trembled and whipped and lashed out. When he reached out, there was someone there. 

And that someone was definitely  _ not _ who he wanted to see at that moment. 

For a brief fraction of a terrifying second, Lance took in his sudden surroundings, including the familiar face before him. It was in this second only that he was curious about the man’s identity. 

Then it hit him like a splash and his lashing became more violent as he tried to push away the body that hovered over him. It was the same man from the last time he visited Lake Amani.

It was the man responsible for his lack of communication with the elemental ancestors. 

 

- _ Keith _ -

 

Keith knew that he was impulsive. Despite being a quick thinker, he occasionally forgot to do such before jumping in and making a decision. It was what made him snap at people and talk back, regretfully, to Lotor. It was what had got him expelled from the boarding academy. It was what made him do things like rush into the middle of peasant uprisings in the search for truth. It was what made him always make the choice of coming back to Lake Amani. 

And it is what led him to jumping into that same lake to save a boy that was supposed to be his enemy. 

Sooner or later, his impulsivity would get the prince killed.

He had returned more frequently to Solera after the incident in the kingdom of Rydliouka-Seudepieu, finding himself less and less able to put on a smile to the two faces of each of his family members.

Especially after finding that the writers of the public statement had been “killed mysteriously”- he had followed leads from the people to the secret portion of a warehouse they had worked in only to find their bodies positioned like lifeless and silent dolls. He had snuck in and tried discreetly speaking with one of the young girls there who was probably around his age. But when the girl didn’t answer and he looked at her face and into her blue eyes, he found that they were made of glass. Her face was painted like one of the ancient china dolls the palace had in the nursery from a planet inhabited solely by humans. Her cheeks were coloured with a blush, an overhang of fake eyelashes acting as curtains over the glass marbles. Keith had put his hand to her lips but there was no breath there- just a sweet smile from rosy lips. 

Keith’s breath caught and he moved his hand to her temple, and cheeks, feeling for warmth. The skin was cold and layered with white paint and a gloss with a single frozen tear cascading from the black wing at the corner of her eye and clinging to her cheek bone. 

That’s when he saw it. Long black hair was swept into a perfect bun with flowers adorning it. Specifically, anemones, rhododendrons, hyssops, tansies, orange lilies, and ebony roses. 

He looked down at her chest and then around the room, his eyes wet and real and alarmed. He gagged. 

They weren’t just in her hair, but they were everywhere. They decorated every dead painted body in the room, each posed figure with a red spider lily- a higanbana- clawing out from their chests with their frozen hearts caged in. Hatched from the flowers, dark winged red and black spiders crawled across feet, flesh, blood, and out of the corner of a man’s open grin between the teeth. 

And all were decorated and posed. All had strings tied to each of their limbs and their head that were connected to the ceiling- not because it was necessary (it wasn’t since they were frozen), but to show that they were puppets. Looking up, Keith saw more actually hanging from the ceiling, all of them staring directly at him with their false eyes and grins, their corpses rocking in their dance poses. Kimonos, hamboks, and silk ribbons swayed from the breeze brought by open windows. 

Teru Teru Bozu, an ancient children’s song, played from somewhere in the distance. 

They had beaten him. They had injected a higanbana seed into their hearts and then watered it with their own blood before half freezing all of the fluids inside of them. They watched as the flowers robbed them of their life force, their victims frozen and unable to do anything but alive enough to feel it. Then they stole their souls, their eyes, replaced them with glass balls, and painted them to be something pretty, placing flowers with cruel meanings across the room for anyone who stumbled across the bodies or were trying to continue their work. Finally, the spiders hatched from the higanbanas and crawled out with their life force still inside them, only to scatter back to the palace and deliver the energy to be used for fighting the war. 

It was all a message. The government wanted them to remain pretty and submissive and controllable. They were their dolls. Their puppets. 

It was a warning: Don’t step out of line.

All they cared about was their bloody war.

No one had ever discussed what happened after that and Keith had to wonder how many things like this had happened without him knowing. Nonetheless, no one knew that he knew. He had to pretend for over a month that he hadn’t seen those eyes, those flowers, those strings, those spiders. He had to pretend like everything was fine, like Lotor and his parents weren’t murderers. Like they weren’t using their victims’ energy to power their palace.

Solera was his escape. In the days following the incident, he had spent his time building a sort of tree house up above in one of the thick towering pink fairy berry blossom sequoias near the lake. 

Keith rarely slept, and when he did, he slept for only a few hours. He had never seen his sleeping problem become this bad though, for he hadn’t been able to get more than an hour of sleep for a week due to nightmares and his ache for the sun. He was sleep deprived, weak, shaky, and exhausted. So, he had climbed out from one of the window panels on his dome ceiling, spoke with Shiro in the underground cave, and then trekked through Lunae in Jada- the time of sleep- in classic Corazonian clothing that was hidden by a Seupedian black cloak. In the hooded cloak, he was able to slip in and out of shadows on his lupa like a shadow sweeper, easily escaping over the border wall with the help of Shiro, who used the tech Keith had designed for this purpose back in the cave. 

In the safety of his tree house, he felt close to the sun. He was warm and could rest his head on his makeshift bed like the sun on the horizon between the borders, easily slipping into a long-awaited slumber.

Being the light sleeper he was, the prince was awoken three hours later to the sound of whinnying. Instantly alert and up, he slipped his dagger and a pocket knife from a hidden pocket in the inside of his cloak and slid down the vine in the hollow tree, descending the trunk until his bare feet hit the soft soil below. He peeked out from the door he had carved into the thin wood. Nickering sounded in the distance, too far away from him to see what was going on. 

He slipped out and into the woods. When he reached Lake Amani, where the cacophony was coming from, he stood behind one of the sequoias and scanned his surroundings. 

There, he saw a boy standing in the lake with the water to his shoulders. His myriad was tied up to a nearby tree and looked obviously frightened. It let out a deep roar that cut through the crisp air, bucking and yanking at its restraints as the glowing orbs growing from its antlers thrashed violently, creating streaks of light in the air with each movement. The tree it was harnessed to was stalk still, the myriad unable to free itself. This boy knew how to tie up a myriad, unlike the stranger he met over a month earlier.

[« Note: My art of A Myriad »](https://eclipse-klance.tumblr.com/image/176200806308)

This was only the third time Keith had ever seen a myriad but, despite that fact, he could tell that the myriad feared for the boy’s life. And for good reason. The boy was walking in deeper with no stop, his eyes glossed over, pale and distant. He was on the “other side” that people had talked about. Usually people had control of their physical bodies still, but occasionally with awakenings and new mageia users, they wouldn’t be able to. He still remembered how Lotor had giggled and spun in circles in his trance during his awakening- He was only eight years old and hadn’t yet been corrupted but was also too deep in to escape.

The boy was having his first awakening. He was quite older than usual for it to occur, probably his age and close to his E nilikíosi (as Solerans called it) , but it wasn’t impossible.

That’s when Keith fully recognized him. His eyes were still adjusting to all the muchness of the light and from this distance and in a dark cloak, the boy just looked like a foreign silhouette against the blazing sun. Now, with that bit of information about the awakening though, Keith realized that it was the same ignorant brat who he was faced with the first time he had come to Solera- well, to Solera purposefully. 

Up until this point, he had remained in his little hideaway in the trunk of the tree, unwilling to interfere with the peculiar situation. But then the boy’s head was underwater and he hadn’t come back up for over a minute. He knew that most Solerans weren’t taught to swim and that they couldn’t hold their breath for long in comparison to their enemies. Their lungs weren’t met for the water in any way. 

And then Keith felt his feet moving like gears against his will. Without thought, he scrambled out the door, raced across the terrain, and dived into the water, ignoring the growls from the myriad and all of the blaring alarms setting off against his eardrums. 

Unlike most Lunaeans, Keith couldn’t breathe underwater. But he could swim. All Lunaeans were  required to do so.

With the sun lighting his way and the water being clearer than any night sky, he could easily locate the boy. He was sitting at the bottom of the lake in a prayer position, his eyes open and distant, unaware of Keith’s approaching presence.

Diving deeper into his decision and into the substance he despised below, Keith wondered if he should pull back. He was being given the time to think- to turn around and yet here he was, reaching out for the boy and not fixing the mistakes of his impulsivity. He grabbed his hand, dragging the lost body up the slope of the lake to the shallow water. His lungs burned and pressed against his ribs, his diaphragm rattling, seemingly about to explode from the lack of oxygen.

His face rose from the surface and he gasped in urgent gulps of air, coughing and wheezing (his brother always teased him about having “lungs like a Soleran”- a dangerous fact in his position), letting the fire dissipate from inside his chest. Bright with adrenaline and the task of saving the boy, he heaved the boy onto the shoreline of the lake, collapsing beside him as he checked for the pulses. 

They were both beating, thank the gods, and miraculously at what could be considered a resting heart rate for a Soleran. He was shocked, letting his fingers slip under his cloak, pulling it off to touch the bare chest above his two hearts. With one hand on each, he found their rhythm in sync, going at a steady pace. Keith stared at his hands, calloused and pale, and watched them rise and fall gently like the waves of the Lunaean seas- not from the hearts, but from his lungs. He was breathing just fine. This Soleran must’ve been a talented diver- more talented than him, a Lunaean- a highly rare attribute for anyone in the empire to have. 

His eyes were open and blinking but elsewhere, with a sort of gloss over their curved surfaces, sending flashes of abhorring images to Keith’s mind as he recalled the eyes of the girl and the others in the warehouse back in the Seupedian territory. But these eyes were moving and alive- alive in a different place but alive nonetheless. And they were real, with accompanying real dark eyelashes and blemished skin and natural imperfections that made the boy perfect in the moment. Because he was real and not painted from head to toe. Keith watched his eyes dart across the water and sky, not realising that he was doing so. They were blue, so much so that it was as if the water from Lake Amani and the sky’s reflection in it had been captured in his irises while at the bottom of the lake- as if they inhaled the water and borrowed its beauty.

Keith was still lying on his side, shivering from the chill of the water in the contrasting damp heat of the kingdom of Corazon. His attention was pulled to the beads of water rolling off of his skin, each one descending with each even deep breath he took. It wasn’t until the other boy had looked directly into Keith’s eyes instead of elsewhere that he realised what depths he had sunk to. He shifted his gaze away, as if that could erase what he had just done, and rolled onto his back with a gentle sigh. 

What had he just done? And why wasn’t he leaving? He had done what he had rushed over here to do, and yet here he sat here, feeling as if a  Jūryoku-gambler  had increased the force of gravity on his own body against the ground. Anticipation fluttered through his stomach and he felt like he was waiting for something. Something quintessential. He didn’t know what though and he still found himself paralyzed.

Minutes passed and worry swept over his features, shoving his brows down. He had never seen anyone in the other world for this long unless they were a monk, whisperer, or singer- neither the boy could be due to his appearance, the fact that he was a Soleran, and his inability to control himself. There had been tales of people getting stuck in the other world and not being able to find their way back to their own realm when lost in the infinite labyrinthine corridors of four shifting dimensions, but those tales had just been more myth than fact. And here the boy was, still elsewhere.

Something touched him lightly and Keith glanced over in question- wondering if he was coming back to their realm- to see the boy still staring at him with elsewhere eyes, his fingers reached out and brushing the back of his hand. It was a gesture he didn’t understand, and he wondered if the boy was trying to find a way back through him, as if Keith could wake him up from this state.

Keith rolled over once more, scooting over so that their shoulders touched. He cleared his throat. “Wake up,” he whispered, with a sort of gentleness that even he couldn’t understand. It so highly contrasted his words the last time they spoke- he thinks this in his mind, catching that the last time they spoke was the first time they spoke, though it didn’t feel like it had been the first and last time. Deja vu- Keith recognized the feeling and wondered if he had seen the boy in someone else and was reminded of him. 

In response, the boy rolled over to his side so that they were facing each other, reaching out again and this time grabbing his hand fully. 

“It’s been a long time,” the boy said, though Keith couldn’t tell if he was speaking to someone on the other side or if the voice speaking to him wasn’t really the boy. His eyes had been fogged over by a darker blue haze. 

Keith didn’t know how to answer so he just squeezed the palm in his, repeating his words. “You were underwater for a long time. You need to wake up.”

The boy shook his head and chuckled. “I can’t wait until the day you wake up.”

Whoever was speaking, it was trying to communicate to him, that was for sure. “I  _ am _ awake,” Keith said, growing annoyed. 

“That’s my star,” he said. “I have to go now, your highness. Don’t keep me waiting for too long.” The voice knew him, and Keith wondered if his elemental ancestors had finally been able to make contact with him through this boy. Hope and disgust all at once fluttered through him. He wanted mageia more than anything so that he could at least not  _ feel  _ powerless against his father and brother, but to share the same element with any of the cruel and wicked men and women of the palace made him want to hurl. Especially water. Images of the painted people with frozen blood resurfaced. Images of a young Lotor freezing a  _ criceta catulum  _ in the woods so that only its head could move. The nightmarish noises the creature made as it starved to death and slowly succumbed to the freezing of his organs- Keith’s feet and hands frozen to a nearby tree as he was forced to watch it happen without helping it, without even putting it out of its misery. He was only allowed to bury the creature. 

Then the boy moved his other hand to the curve of Keith’s face, holding it as he gave a bitter smile. The images washed away, the touch bringing him back. “Take care of him,” he whispered. “Good morning, sweetie.”

Alarmed and bewildered, Keith sat up and scrutinised the boy below him. He hadn’t heard anyone use that term (“good morning”) for decades- the word becoming meaningless with the lack of cycling day and night in each empire. There were no more beginnings of days. The only mornings that existed now were in the bridge between empires, and the word then was never paired with the word ‘good’ because it always meant another day of war. 

Keith knew that they were beautiful though; he had watched them from his perch on the roof of his makeshift hut- atop the towering skull of the zanoril. Never had he thought that a sky could be so colorful. Never had he wanted the war to end so badly, only so that then both sides could share that image and bask in its full beauty without having to worry about being shot by the enemy. 

To him, all mornings were good. It were people that were bad. 

It was bizarre, though, to see the two words escape the boy’s lips, and even weirder were his preceding words. Keith didn’t know who the voice was referring to- who he was supposed to take care of. But he was as curious as “Le Chat”- the Lunaean god of curiosity and as impatient for answers as his father- a comparison he hated to be true. 

Urgently, he spat, “Who are you?” But the fog over the boy’s eyes drained and Keith knew the moment was gone. His chance of gaining the tiniest bit of control over his spiraling tsunami of a world had dissipated, vanished. 

Frustrated, weak, and feeling more hopeless than ever at the reminder of his place in the world, he examined the boy’s face. But then Keith also felt less alone than he had in years. Not only was he getting to know the true Shiro, secrets and all, but here was this boy, who had not yet had his elemental awakening (or, at the very least, had just discovered it recently at a late age). Keith calmed, waiting for the boy’s reaction. He just stared back at him, back into his eyes like before- this time being here and not elsewhere.

For a moment, Keith felt at peace. Keith felt okay. Keith didn’t feel isolated on a glacier.

For a moment, everything was still and tranquil. 

The next moment, everything was moving and wild and alone and not okay.

The boy was reaching out and thrashing violently like a storm at sea. A scream drowned out the silence, replacing it with the terrifying trembling noise. It reminded Keith of the  _ criceta catulum  _ in the woods- frozen in some place. 

Keith jerked back, looking back at wild eyes. The boy stilled for a second, realizing where he was and coming to his senses. But then it all returned to the storm again when the boy recognized him.

Keith began to regret ever saving the stranger. He began to curse his impulsivity. 

“This is all  _ your _ fault!” The uncoordinated and purposeless movements became precise and meaningful, with it turning into a battle against Keith instead of a battle back into this realm. It became targeted at him, with the boy pushing against his chest until he fell back against the ground.

“Stop!” The boy didn’t stop. “Listen!” He didn’t listen.

Keith scrambled backwards, trying to get to his feet. The boy’s eyes were wide and furious and piercing him, his eyebrows narrowed, cheeks flared with a burning flush, and jaw set tightly, probably grinding his teeth together. At the sight of clenched fists and his charging march, adrenaline shot through Keith’s spine. He went into survival mode, pulling at the boy’s pant leg in an attempt to get him to the ground with him. All he needed was the time to explain himself. 

The boy tripped, crashing atop of Keith. Bare wet skin slapped against each other painfully. As they screamed and cursed at each other, they erupted into a whirlwind of hair pulling, clawing, pushing, wrestling, kicking, a busted lip given to Keith, and even two bites to the neck and ear from Keith in an attempt to end it. It didn’t. They continued to roll and chase each other, only to trip and fall on to each other again.

Keith turned over on top of him, taking the upper hand and pinning him against the soil. He growled. “I just saved your life. You should be thanking me, asshat.”

“You didn’t do nothing.”

Keith smirked. “You’re right. I didn’t do nothing. I saved you.”

The boy stopped struggling. “Huh?”

“Double negative. Your grammar was wrong,” he deadpanned, rolling his purple eyes. 

“No it wa- That’s not the point! The point is,” the boy said, finally freeing his hands and grabbing onto Keith’s ponytail, yanking his head back with a following grunt and an attempt to knee his groin from Keith (he missed). “You didn’t save me. You ruined my life!” 

“Fucking hell, will you listen-” then the boy rolled over harshly, knocking Keith’s arm down and sending his face into the ground before he rolled back, this time stradling the small of his back with Keith’s ponytail still in hand. The taste of grass was not pleasant. 

“Why am I wet and why were you hovering over me?”

Keith shifted his face to the side, spitting out soil from his mouth as the boy pulled his head back. Keith grunted in both disgust and the discomfort of the awkward neck angle. “Well, if you would’ve listened, you would’ve learned that you went underwater in the lake while in your trance. I figured that since you were under for over a minute and were still in that other realm, that I should help you. Then I waited for you to wake up to make sure that you were alright.”

“ _ What? _ ” The boy asked, floundered. He dropped Keith’s head with a thunk, the Lunaean instantly protesting in pain. 

“So can you get off of me?”

The boy sighed, the tenseness in his muscles relaxing as he flopped off to lay beside him. “I’m still pissed.”

“And so am I.” Keith shot a glare, attempting to lick off the blood that began to drip from his bottom lip. It hurt like a bitch. His whole body did. All of this would certainly leave bruises, so questions were bound to come, and without any medications or aid from the medical staff, he would have to try to make his own healing remedies himself. Lotor wouldn’t shut up about this for some time if he didn’t get any makeup or supplies from Shiro’s secret stash in the underground cave. “What the hell?”

The stranger had his own batch of injuries and he craned his head from his torso to his back to try and examine the scratch marks he had. “I thought you had tried to drown me.”

“Why would I try to drown you?”

“You and I aren’t exactly ‘best buds’.” 

“So we didn’t start on the right foot, but that doesn’t mean I would attempt to kill you! Besides, when you woke up, you were out of the water!”

“Maybe you thought that killing me another way would be best.”

“I think you’re just angry that you haven’t had your awakening yet.”

The stranger gasped. “I have! Rare element,  _ remember _ ?”

“ _ Right _ . Sorry, I forgot. It must of been drowned out by all of your BS.”

“Still the Lord of Jackasses.”

“Still the King of Dumbasses.”

Eyes snapped towards each other, and for a few stretching moments, they stayed staring, both unable to find the words to fight back in their shared state of pain and exhaustion. Irises remained fixated, creating a fog over them as if their eyes were capable of holding something tangible between the two. Neither looked away, believing that they would be admitting defeat if they did so. 

Keith was better at keeping a straight face, and he knew it. He could maintain a calm expression, gaze like fire. The stranger gulped and Keith’s regard followed the movement. 

An unholy growl, quite unlike that of the myriad’s, sounded behind them. And then another. It was Keith’s turn to have his adam’s apple bob. He was in a foreign land with foreign creatures and a foreign stranger. He had reason to be wary.

The stranger’s widening eyes and sudden tenseness proved his reason to fear. “Shit shit shit shit- we need to go. Like now.”

Keith pulled out the dagger from its sheath tied to his hipbone, glad that it hadn’t fallen off and sunk to the bottom of the lake. It was dark, the ebony metal glinting from the indigo glow that lit the flame symbol which consumed a purple gem in the center. The dagger was the only thing he had of his deceased biological mother. “What are they?” He asked, cautiously glancing over his shoulder as they shuffled through the brushery towards the stranger’s myriad.

“They’re leos.”

Keith’s breath hitched. “I thought that they only existed in Almasi and occasionally Meretaiaha.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t from around these parts, are you? They exist here, just a different species from the leos in those areas.  _ Corazonia assad leos _ . However, these leos are dangerous. Especially to people.”

“Why’s that?” Keith whispered, remaining alert. 

“They feast on hearts. We each have two of them, making us good targets.” Keith didn’t care if, in reality, he only had one. They were still at risk. Corazonian assad leos ate hearts, just like how higanbanas consumed their life force.

The noises approached closer, coming from seemingly every angle. They were trapped and had been being circled for quite some time. “Do you have a weapon?”

The boy glanced over at his myriad. “Yes.” 

They only had to walk a few more steps and they would be able to escape on the back of the creature. But it was too far and a leo had leapt from the vegetation, snarling and flashing their jagged teeth. 

“I’ll deal with it. Go.”

“No, you’re coming with me.”

Keith raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

The stranger shrugged, a lopsided grin on his face. “You saved my life. I guess it’s common curtesy to return favors or something like that.”

“Then pick me up when I’m done. Let me distract it and then you shoot if it isn’t dead already,” Keith said, noticing the bow and arrows. He pushed the stranger forward, lurching to the side to block him, knowing that the creature would target the one with two hearts first. The leo lunged forward, aiming for the prince’s chest. He dodged, swiftly maneuvering around it. He plunged the dagger into its neck, using his momentum to flip into the air and over the beast, missing its deadly bite and further scraping the sharp edge of his weapon along the back of its neck. 

It fell dead the moment the prince hit the ground. Keith hated to kill things. It made him and his brother regretfully have more in common. The only thing that allowed him to do so was the heart thing. Attacking the leos felt like he was attacking higanbanas. He could pretend that he was slaying the beastly beautiful flowers that murdered all of those people- humans, galrans, unilu, reiphods, arielians, yuppers, krellians, nalquods, talwarans, niloofarians, bluvens, mus, and other species, all of them dead. 

The stranger had untied his myriad, climbed up, and hiked his leg over her, whipping his bow and sheath from their place on her side and slinging them across his back as he led the creature over to Keith. Keith stared at the leo, flashes of beating organs in Lotor’s hand, as if his palm were the mouth of a leo. He shook the thought away and turned to the myriad.

“Do you know how to shoot?” The stranger asked. 

“If I’m being honest, I’m one of the worst shots in the empire.”

“Do you know how to ride a myriad?”

“I’ve never tried.”

The boy bit his lip, hearing a roar in the distance. “Do you think you can? I’ll talk you through it.”

Keith thought about his experiences driving his hoverbike, riding his cosmic wolf, and his  _ caecus equus nivum _ riding classes with Nix. Really, all he had to do was get them to the treehouse, which wasn’t too far away. They had no chance if they went on foot. “We have no choice. The leos are faster.”

The stranger scooted back against the second hump positioning himself so that he was facing the rear before motioning for Keith to board quickly.

Keith wasn’t the best with animals, he didn’t have the patience. But he also didn’t have hesitance. Gently, he placed a hand on its spotted side, silently admiring the height of the creature (the humps of its back were even taller than him) as he climbed the two rungs of a sort of rope ladder before straddling his leg over the space behind the first hump on the intricately patterned rug that decorated her. The stranger leaned back against him for support and Keith could feel him tremble in fear. 

Keith took a deep breath and yanked the reigns, kicking her side lightly. The myriad instantly sprinting forwards. Her glowing silver-blue hair whipped back and around them before tying them in place.

“I thought you said you didn’t know how to ride one!” The boy shouted, shooting an arrow off at one of the charging leos. 

“I don’t!” He sharply yanked sideways and they made a turn into the woods.

“Why are we going into the forest?!?!”

“Trust me!” In and out of trees they raced, the vermillion flames that lit the two short front horns and two of the tails flickering like candles from their speed and turning blue from the amount of energy she had to use to do so. 

Keith couldn’t see behind him so the stranger continued to update him on their status. “Two down. There are about three that are close enough to possibly become threats.”

A couple more arrows were shot. “Two now.”

Keith could see the treehouse in the distance, the door still precariously cracked open, the door and trunk thankfully big enough to fit the myriad inside- he didn’t see the stranger leaving the creature behind. “We’re almost there.”

Just a bit more and- a leo pounced from the side. It must’ve seen what they were doing long before and gone a roundabout way. Before either could react, it sunk its teeth into the leg of the myriad, making it whinny and buck wildly. Its hair whipped, sending the two over the side and hanging, tangled in the hair before they were dropped to the ground with a thud. 

“Blue!” The stranger cried, rapidly aiming and firing at the beast responsible. Once, twice, and it was dead. Thrice. Four times. 

“Stop, you’re going to use all of your arrows!” Keith snapped, pulling him back from his want for revenge. He took out his dagger, pulling the stranger back against the injured myriad, blood gushing from its leg as it collapsed to the ground. 

The two leos that chased after the myriad grew closer, with another leo approaching from either side and one shifting in front of the door to the inside of the trunk. They were trapped. 

“Fuck,” the stranger swore. “I have to die with  _ you _ ?”

Keith scowled. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.” He pressed his back against the stranger’s, each of them keeping watch over half of the pack with their weapons in hand. 

“I only have two arrows left.”

“Then use them well.”

The circle around them grew tighter. The only plus side to this was that now the stranger could aim better. He shot once, hitting directly into the burning eyes of one of the creatures. 

One arrow, a dagger, and the pocket knife still in Keith’s sheith. Four leos and an injured myriad. 

No arrows, a dagger, and the pocket knife still in Keith’s sheith. Four leos and an injured myriad. 

No arrows, a dagger, and the pocket knife from Keith’s sheith now thrown like a dart and staining a beast’s fur crimson. Three leos and an injured myriad. 

“We’re screwed, Fireboy.”

“This would be a good time to use that ‘amazing rare element’ you have.”

“About that…”

“Of fucking course.”

“Why don’t you just use your fire?” The stranger asked as they circled around each other, waiting for one of the leos to pounce. 

“I can’t control fire!”

“Have you  _ tried _ ?”

“Yes!” Keith hadn’t, but that wasn’t the point. The stranger didn’t know that he was Lunaean and wasn’t able to control any of the elements a Soleran could. 

“I feel lied to!”

“Unlike you, I never said that I could control any element. Now shut up and think of a way out for us!”

The closest leo to the stranger lunged forward, Keith jumping in from to block and guard the one without a weapon. He slashed at the creature, only managing to get a non-fatal cut across one of its feline limbs before he had to move to another one that had jumped in, taking advantage of the situation. This time, Keith managed to blind the beast with a slash across its face. He had stopped neither leo, but he had slowed them down. 

Unexpectedly, the stranger made the next attack. Like one might throw a javelin, he threw his bow, its sharp point stabbing the one with the cut on its limb. Then there were two. 

There was no time for celebration. The uninjured one lashed forward, attempting to take a bite out of Keith’s neck. Instead, it’s teeth met the stranger’s shoulder- him being taller- as the boy blocked his partner and pushed something in his hand against the leo’s neck. 

Yelping, the leo fell back. 

The stranger winced harshly, a deep groan escaping his lips as he stumbled backwards. He applied pressure to the wound with his hand, the other occupied with the weapon he used. Keith, glancing down at it, found that it was part of one of the myriad’s wooden antlers- snapped off and still burning its never-ending flame from its metal tip. The leo had a burn mark to show. It certainly wasn’t going to make it run off or stop fighting, but he had kept the leo from making a deadly bite into Keith’s vital veins and arteries. 

Keith gave a weak smile, wishing he could help the boy who just saved his life but they still had a task at hand. Urgent, he sprinted over to the dead leo with the pocket knife plunged into it and pulled it out, throwing it at the blind lion now hungrily pouncing on the stranger, smelling the scent of blood. Thankfully, it hit, and the creature collapsed, right beside the boy. 

The last leo, which stood between them and the treehouse, was soon defeated afterwards from two cuts from Keith’s dagger. It wasn’t dead, but it wouldn’t get back up for quite some time. 

Keith heaved, rushing to pull the stranger up.

“Come on,” he said. The stranger’s eyes fluttered around, unfocused. “Come on. You need to hold in there for just a bit longer.” 

Keith could hear the roaring of the rest of the pack in the distance and he continued to speak to the stranger. If he went unconscious, he would be killed out here. Supporting the limping boy, they walked to the tree house door.

“No, I’m not leaving Blue out here to die.”

“Idiot, if you stay out here  _ you _ will die.”

“At least let me try.”

Keith sighed. “Fine, but I’m helping.” They walked swiftly back to the myriad. 

“Blue, come on.” He clicked his tongue, rubbing her side. “Please, baby.” The myriad struggled to stand, stumbling when it tried to walk on its injured leg. 

Meanwhile, the noises grew louder. Out of the corner of his eye, Keith could see a glimpse of a leo approaching. “We need to go.”

“No, I’m not leaving her! We’re almost there!”

Keith couldn’t leave someone who had saved their life, even if Keith had saved them before and they were technically equal. “Ugh!” He sounded, frustrated. “If you get killed, it’s your fault."

Closer, closer. 

“Elemental ancestors, this would be a great time for one of us to have our awakening!”

Closer, closer. 

The leo was almost to them when they reached the door. The stranger pushed it open as Keith guarded behind him.

It didn’t open. 

“Shit, it’s jammed or something.”

“It’s coming closer!”

“Throw your dagger then!”

“I  _ can’t _ .”

“And why not?!”

Keith thought of the metal mouths that wandered this forest in search of metal to consume. “It’s like Blue. I can’t risk losing it,” he bit. 

The leo was about to reach them, and the rest of the pack swarmed behind it. It seemed like they were back at square one. 

“Fireboy, it’s a dagger.”

“ _ No _ .”

“We don’t have the time!”

Keith sent him a glare. “ _ No! _ ”

“Why can’t you just-”

Then the door flew open, smacking the stranger in the face as a chimera leapt out. Keith recalled that, in his hurry, he never bothered to close the door to his place.

Great, another monster. It was their day to die. 

Keith screeched, jumping back. 

“Dude, no,” the stranger said, grinning and rubbing at his forehead. “Chimera eat leos. They’re like the guardian angels of the forest.”

The chimera leapt pass them, chasing after the beasts and sending them scattering. 

“Thank the gods,” Keith said, pushing the myriad and the stranger in before slamming the door closed, locking it.

The two sighed, slumping against the wood of the trunk which stretched the length of the two combined. The boy beside Keith laughed in relief, leaning against the younger boy for support as pain blossomed across his shoulder and down to his armpit. 

Overwhelmed with the feeling of victory and catching the stranger’s contagious happiness, one of Keith’s rare smiles quirked his lips upwards in a light tilt.

“You tried to push the door open, didn’t you?” Keith deadpanned.

“Wait, was I-  _ oh _ . Yeah…” the stranger said sheepishly.

Keith was too relieved to be angry. Instead he chuckled to himself, muttering, “If it weren’t for that chimera, we could’ve died because you didn’t know how to open a door correctly.”

The boy flushed, embarrassed, but laughing either way at the situation. 

A wince escaped, and their moment of victory dissipated, Keith realizing that he had now locked him, a wounded stranger, and a injured myriad into his treehouse surrounded by leos. 

“I’ll be back,” Keith said, going to go get some of the medical supplies he stored up above. He had them just in case anything like this happened. Keith would like to believe that it was due to his great “planning for everything and anything” skills that this worked out, but it was Shiro who had insisted that he brought an aid kit to the treehouse, listing off the plethora of times Keith’s impulsivity and recklessness had gotten him injured. Keith was never one to worry about the toll his health had to pay for his actions, which was both a great and dangerous trait. 

When he descended the vine, he had a closed bucket of water in hand, a sack on his back filled with the best he and Shiro could find or make without stealing from the medical staff or asking for supplies. It included gauze and painkillers (they were the only things Shiro was allowed to have after he received any injuries because they were ancient and not commonly used these days with the latest technology they had), forceps, a needle holder, scissors, surgical suture, dressing pads, wipes, an antiseptic spray, two cloths, and some sort of gel Shiro had created from various herbs. 

Keith dumped it on the bed of flowers the injured rested on, watching the contents fall. 

“That’s it? What is half of this stuff? This stuff is really beta.”

“It’s what I have and it is what will have to do. Sorry, princess,” he snapped harshly. 

The boy gasped, inhaling sharply from the pain it caused. “I’m not a princess,” he argued, but he was too weak to really sound like he was.

“Fine.  _ Prince _ ,” Keith said, finding the situation quite ironic. Here he was, a true prince, serving a complaining peasant. 

Despite the ungrateful comments, the prince set to work tending to the two of them. 

After some bickering, Keith gave in to the boy’s request and treated the myriad first- the two at least agreeing that the bucket of water would be used for the stranger in order to prevent infection, the boy watching him lazily the whole time as he went through the process of cleaning, spraying, stitching, cleaning again, dressing, and then wrapping the wound. 

When he was done, he returned to the boy before him. 

What was he doing, handing over the painkillers to his enemy and then making sure he swallowed them? What was he doing helping a Soleran? Hell, what was he even doing  _ here _ ? Adrenaline wasn’t pushing him away from the stranger or keeping him in his own empire. If any other Lunaean knew what he was doing, they would think that he was a traitor and a madman. 

And perhaps Keith was. He wanted to betray the government and after experiencing everything he had, maybe his sanity had started to chip away like old paint.

That was it. Keith wasn’t necessarily doing this completely from the goodness of his heart, but instead was saving this boy as an act of revenge. If he couldn’t fight back against the government or save those people with his mageia, than at least he could do this. It was something in his control, and for the first time in a long while, Keith felt like he had power. This life was in his hands and he could choose to save him, thereby turning against all of those who would’ve done the opposite. Against his father and Sendak and Haggar and Lotor. 

The water became diluted with blood, turning into a color similar to that of some of the ponds in Seudepieu- turned rusty from the scarlet sand the kingdom was known for. The cloth was tainted a similar shade- brighter against the white of the material. Keith could tell that the boy was trying to hold back grunts and a whole orchestra of pain as he continued his work. 

Keith prepared the antiseptic spray, recalling the way that adults always told people that there would be less pain than there actually was. Though it was the often the only thing that got children to go along with it, Keith always felt a bit tricked when the medical staff would say those magical words only to have Keith be in a world of pain. He despised it even more when it came out of his father’s mouth when he referred to Shiro’s “treatment”. 

“Do you want the truth or the reassurance?” 

The boy eyed the antiseptic. “It’s gonna hurt a lot, isn’t it?”

Keith nodded. “Yeah, it will.”

He contemplated this. “I’ll need a hand.”

The prince pursed his lips. “Well, yeah, I’m going to be spraying-”

“-No, I mean that I’ll need a hand to hold.”

Keith scrunched up his face, his brows pinching as he frowned slightly. He glanced at the hand, the hand of his enemy, and felt the fear and caution seep through him. His throat tightened like a restricting cobra, the snake clasping his lungs and slithering in his gut. He didn’t hold hands with anyone, let alone a Soleran; There was no room for such trust in this world, not when families and friends abandoned and betrayed you, not when you lived as a chess piece in a game of deception and murder. 

Nor was he used to anyone besides Shiro trusting him back. After all, he was the peculiar outcasted orphan prince of the empire who had not yet had their awakening. Any people who had tried to trust or help him ended up hurt in the end- either by the government or by Keith himself. 

But the thought of Shiro made him hesitate to decline the offer. Shiro was the one person he trusted in this harsh world, and he knew that if he were here, he would take the boy’s hand, even if he knew that he was a stranger. Shiro was perceptive and cautious when it came to danger, but he was also compassionate, generous, understanding, warm, and there, an open door to a shelter, a fire in the cold. The one true brother he had. If Shiro could see this, he would want Keith to let down his walls and gift the stranger this one wish in his state of pain. And though Keith didn’t want to do this, he didn’t want to be like Lotor or his father, who refused to help people in their suffering even when they had the power to do so. So though the stranger could turn on him at any second no matter how innocent he seemed, he also did save Keith’s life multiple times, and hence Keith hesitantly let his free hand be grasped by the Soleran. By his enemy. 

It was surprisingly soft- obvious that he must’ve spent a lot of time on his skin- and its temperature reminded Keith of the sun, unlike the hands of those around him in Lunae. It was quite a contrast from Keith’s own hands: slightly smaller, unpolished, and hard with dozens of yellowish calluses. Keith let his hand be held awkwardly, not really holding back, and the prince used all of his attention on trying to keep his hand from shaking or clamming up. Though, it didn’t seem like the boy minded. Instead, he pulled it closer towards him. Keith couldn’t help but keep a wary eye on his hand in his, ready for anything that might happen. 

The stranger gave him the okay. 

“It can’t hurt worse than-” he yelped, calloused fingertips digging into Keith’s palm as the spray stinged the boy’s wound. In the back of his mind, Keith wondered if he played a stringed instrument. “- _ Fuck _ !” he yelped through gritted teeth. Keith didn’t mind how hard he held on, not letting go for a while. It hurt, but the boy hurt more and Keith could tell that he wasn’t doing it on purpose. “Apparently it can.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith said, grabbing the gel he learned was for numbing. Unfortunate that Shiro had told him it wouldn’t work before the antiseptic. “This will help.”

Keith applied the green gel to the area of his wound and to the strip along its perimeter. 

The boy sighed. “Thanks.”

Keith hadn’t expected for the boy to say such. He began to stitch with the suture. 

“Not just for that. For saving my life earlier, possibly twice and now. Sorry for being the real Lord of Jackasses. And sorry for sticking your head in the ground and giving you that,” he said, looking down at Keith’s busted lip. 

He digested the words. Keith wasn’t used to receiving thank yous and it took him a minute or so for him to respond. “No need to thank me. The favour was returned. If you hadn’t jumped in front of me, I probably would’ve been dead by now from a broken artery in my neck.” He cut off the edge of the suture with the scissors. “Sorry for messing up your whole ‘trying to discover my element’ thing; I know how it feels. And sorry for clawing and biting you.”

“Your bite was nothing in comparison to that leo’s, and you’re treating that now, so I guess you’re forgiven.”

Keith finished wrapping the gauze around his shoulder, his fingers lingering a bit longer than they should. “I guess you are too.”

In the candle-lit lighting of the space and surrounded by the rich wood around them, the sharp highlights of his face were an amber, the shadows harsh and a pleasant mixture of the colours of hickory wood, syrup, and the slight violet hue that only artists could catch. Keith wished he had his paints with him- the ones he mixed himself and were stored away in his secret stash in his quarters. Then, he could capture the boy, or, at least attempt to (he found that his paintings never fully compared to the real thing) to in a painting. He would be a good subject, especially with the contrasting warm colors of his skin, hair, and sun and the cool colors of his eyes, his Corazonian attire, and the sea. 

It was like the boy was back in his trance, except they both were, the stranger’s laugh fading away and the two of them falling into a comfortable silence of locked eyes and orange light and lemon scent. Okayness and a sliver of bliss and unspoken similarities. Sunlight and moonlight and a falling star. 

“It’s ironic.”

“What?” Keith asked, falling back from that silent star. 

“My name.” The stranger paused. “I was born in the time of the creature and almost died at the hands of it. Leo. Technically it’s Leonardo, but I prefer Leo.”

“Leo?” Keith asked, surprised that this stranger had just shared their name with him. Something inside him lit up and it took some effort for him to suppress the foreign feeling. Hope, perhaps?

“Leo.”

“It's Keith.”

“Keith?”

“Yeah. Keith.”

Leo smiled. “I like it. It fits.”

Keith had never felt more himself in his entire life. He wasn’t Akira here, in the trunk of this tree on this bed of luminescent forget-me-nots, in Solera. Just Keith.

“Can we make a truce?” Keith asked. The words slipped from his lips unbidden, gone in the air and too late for him to try and catch them by the tail.  

The boy grinned, a grin that was lopsided and reassuring. He didn’t mind letting his words go like sugarflies if this is what creature got caught up in his web instead. “I accept your offer of truce, Fireboy.”

Keith couldn’t help his lips from tilting upwards. He didn’t try to chase it away back into the shadows. “Great, Prince Leonardo.”

As is customary with any sort of contract, promise, or truce, the two looped their pointer fingers in an embrace and shook on it. 

Keith wondered when was the last time that a Lunaean and a Soleran shook fingers or held hands like this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the awfully boring beginning. I've been having a rough past few weeks and I hope that it hasn't affected my writing.
> 
> Thank you for all of the feedback and for reading! I appreciate all of your comments and kudos. And all of the theories. :)
> 
> Here is the link to the official Tumblr page for this fanfiction, where I will be posting the art from these chapters and any other art I create from this fanfiction: https://eclipse-klance.tumblr.com/
> 
> -Orion-


	5. Even Gods Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Feelings rise and gods fall.  
> Stars pass, are reborn, and are threatened. 
> 
> Or
> 
> After having an enjoyable bonding moment with Keith, Lance receives news about the results of an important Soleran mission. Gods fall and Lance finds himself struggling to keep it together for the empire. 
> 
> Upon his return, Keith learns new unsettling information after running into Lotor.

- _ Lance _ -

Lake _ Amani, Qalbia, Kingdom of Corazon, Soleran Empire _

Saturni, _ Pridie Kalendas Taurus, 1,500th Deca-Phoeb, 998 G.B. _

_ Three phoebs and seven quintants until Lance’s 17th birthday _

In the two oras of talking that followed the battle with the leos, the pair discussed little of their frustration with having a lack of an awakening at their age. The topic wasn't touched too deeply and mageia was mentioned briefly.

Yet, to Lance at least, it felt like their entire conversation was about just that: Their mutual missing piece of themselves, their element. 

Now, it wasn’t like he was about to pour his heart out about the topic to some stranger, especially about the powerless feeling he felt because it made him feel even weaker if he admitted it, but during the entire time they chatted, there was a swirling undercurrent of silent understanding. Silent knowing. Even without Lance doing the whole "pouring his heart out" thing. In their time together, Lance had quickly learned that Keith was a boy of few words but yet when Keith looked at him, there was a gleam in his eyes that could speak a thousand words. Everything went a little bit deeper than their surface level. 

For example, Keith discussed briefly about training himself in combat and weapons when Lance asked  _ where the hell did you learn how to fight like that?   _ (b efore Lance quickly explained that it was just strange to find someone even close to his level. Of course.) 

Lance understood the implication when, once he had finished explaining himself, Keith said offhandedly, “I thought it would help.” 

Lance finished the sentence in his head. _Keith thought it would help him with the powerless feeling he felt from his lack of mageia_. 

That’s why Lance himself focused so intently on his own combat training and studies. It never really gave him the sense of control, safety, and purpose that he was chasing after though. Nothing was the same as mageia. It was worth trying though. 

In return, Lance could tell that Keith saw beneath their conversation as well. The prince wasn’t going to admit that he had ever felt powerless before, but he could tell that Keith saw through it from the suspicious look in his eyes when Lance bragged about his own skills, saying that he was “confident he could succeed even those with mageia”. By that point, Lance probably would’ve tried to prove his confidence and position further, but he knew that it was a losing battle. Keith was the only person he had ever met besides himself who had not had their awakening yet at their age (he learned that Keith would be having his Enilikiosi ceremony a few months after he had his own) and, for that reason, he couldn’t even find a reason to be so closed off or dishonest because Keith  _ understood _ .

Overall, the two spent most of the time exchanging light banter as they took care of any other injuries each of them had gained in the battle (and in their fight). Lance teased Keith about his hair and whole “Mr. Mysterious” thing going on while Keith reluctantly played back by making witty comebacks when Lance was being a bit over dramatic or too confident. They playfully shoved each other and laughed. They even spoke of the leos, Lance exclaiming, “That was so cool! It was like we were in an action-adventure novel!” before falling back against the trunk in pain from the movement of fist bumping the air with his injury. 

Even if Keith looked like he was having some sort of strange inner war behind his eyes, Lance found that he enjoyed the hours spent with him. Two strangers who probably never would’ve even spoken in a friendly manner to one another had it not been for almost losing their lives together. Two strangers who despised each other and though they might be exasperated or not like each other still, for these three oras they were able to put it aside and work together then celebrate afterward. And at this time, Lance felt like he wasn’t talking to a stranger at all. The conversation flowed easily and he actually found himself not hating the boy.

Keith in fact, was a breather. He was a bubble of air in a sea of water. Lance had failed to do what he had come to do, but he didn’t even care because the banter was alive and they were alive and Lance understood him and, if he was being entirely honest, Keith was hot. He’d rather spend the last few hours he’d probably ever see of the boy having a friendly conversation and admiring those pretty eyes of his than fighting. He was already exhausted enough. 

“Remind me why I’m talking to you again,” Keith said. He was teasing him- if only, at most, sounding 65% exasperated- but something in his expression looked as if he were really considering it. 

Lance really did not need a mood killer considering how much of a wreck that night went so instead he ignored what he saw and said (with a tone that held an implied “duh”), “Because I’m dying-”

“-you’re not dying-”

“-and it is only polite to give dying people company.”

“I should’ve left you out there.”

Lance gasped and clutched his heart. “We have been through so much together, Keith- attempts at awakenings, me drowning in a lake, a perfectly executed wrestling match between us, and a battle with leos- and then we spend two hours in here having a  _ bonding moment  _ and becoming best bros and then you say that?! You wound me, Keith, you really do.” Lance knew that he was a lot. He knew that he was more open and loud to strangers than one really should be when they don’t know someone, but that was just who he was. He easily slipped into people’s lives and acted like they had known each other much longer than they actually had. It often made him considered charming and it helped him gain allies throughout the capital, but he also knew that there were some people who found his forwardness and attempts at friendship overwhelming, intrusive, or just downright annoying. And considering that Keith seemed to be that type of person, he was surprised that he was still conversing with him.

“We barely know each other,” Keith said, rolling his eyes, though there was a small smile twitching on his lips. And by gods, Lance wanted to see that smile grow. 

For some reason, Lance didn’t feel like he  _ barely _ knew Keith. He didn’t understand why. The only reason he could conjure up was that Lance had become  _ that _ good at reading people. “Wow, and here I thought we had a real connection.”

Keith was struggling to keep his smile down and remain nonchalant. “We really do. Biting and clawing at each other.” 

“Awe, and we already have cute pet names for each other.”

“You’re right, King of Dumbasses,” Keith smirked. Lord, half of him wanted to wash that smirk right off his face while the other half wanted to freeze it there and revel in the way something warm seemed to flood into his being at the sight of it. 

Lance briefly cursed his hormones for sparking that second half. 

The stretching screech of a hellhawk ripped through the air in a burst, sending the hairs on Lance’s neck standing as a shudder sprinted through him. To anyone else, the animalistic noise probably just sounded like it came from the ebony beak of a harmless soaring hellhawk in the distance, possibly circling the sequoia trees as its orange and black eyes scoured the land and ash fluttered down occasionally from the tips of its wings, blowing in the sweet zephyr. Lance knew that the whistle didn’t come from that fallen angel of a creature though, but instead from the wooden cornucopia-shaped “hellhawk” horn that Lucina’s missing father had passed down to her before his disappearance. He knew the sound by heart. It was Lance’s call back and an unexpected one at that, because he was supposed to go back on his own, on Blue. 

Lance glanced over at the closed wooden door with wide eyes, eyebrows raised and jaw slightly slack in his surprise. Though he was grateful because there was no way that Lance would get back in time even if he left now due to Blue’s injury, this wasn’t the plan. This meant that something had gone wrong on the other end. 

The boy beside him furrowed his eyebrows and tried to keep an expression of pure nonchalance, but, as Lance turned his attention back to him, he saw the way that his muscles tensed as he froze. His dark eyes darted across Lance’s features and Lance wondered what he was looking so desperately for. What made this stranger so expectant and alert. He shared a grin to reassure him, hoping that it would calm his nerves. 

The horn’s roar whipped through the air again. 

The prince sighed, feeling himself blown back into reality, away from the warm lighting and glowing blue flower buds and truces and banter. “I think… that’s my ride coming.” The corner of his mouth slid upwards into an easy smile, appreciative and hesitant to leave. 

“The avian who dragged you away angrily last time?”

Lance nodded, fiddling with his fingers as he turned away.  “My sister, regretfully,” he said, though he could feel that his own expression was one of fondness rather than annoyance. 

Keith pursed his lips, staring unflinchingly back at him. He appeared to be considering something. “Will I ever get to know if you’ve found your element?”

The question may have been worded one way, but Lance knew what he really meant. He bit his bottom lip, chewing on it slightly. He wanted to see Keith again. He really did. Never before had he met someone who understood his situation with mageia and now that there was someone who could relate out there, he didn’t want to return to the isolation and outcasting of the palace. “I live in a family of traveling merchants, and I’m leaving once Ypnos ends to Almasi. I won’t be back for months.”

Keith smirked, something mischievous and playful and bright burning in those violet eyes. “Great. Gives me time to discover mine before you do.”

“I thought we had a truce, mullet,” though there was no accusation in the words. Instead, they were airy and light, teasing as his lips tugged further upwards and his eyes sparked back. 

A slightly tucked chin. Sly like a feline. “Just means that I won’t bite you again.”

“Is this a challenge then?”

He raised a thick dark brow. “I don’t know, can you handle it?” That fucking smirk. Half of Lance wanted to burn it off while the other half felt himself pleasantly burning because of it. He loved challenges. Determination and passion. Friendly competition and goading and banter. Fire. 

And especially winning. 

“Can you handle losing miserably?”

“That won’t happen.” Keith’s eyes were steady on him, determination, confidence, and certainty all brewing in them. “ _ When _ I win, you have to stop calling me Fireboy.” When, not if. 

“Cocky, I like it.” He let the grin seep into his expression, his hip leaning to the side as he faced the boy. “You’re on, Fireboy. Whoever has their awakening first wins.” 

It didn’t take long for Lance to realize what he wanted when _he_ won. He was curious (to a point that perhaps he was nosy, according to Hunk and Pidge), and the walls barricading Keith in fascinated him. He wondered what was behind those walls, and he wondered why they existed. Who he was. All he knew about him was that he was a determined hot-head who hadn’t had his awakening yet. “And, _when_ _I_ win, you have to tell me where you’re really from, Mr. Mysterious,” he said, because, now experiencing his confusion first-hand to the common threat of leos, he could tell that he wasn’t from Corazon. 

Keith crossed his arms across his chest. “I amend my previous statement. When I win, you have to refrain from calling me by anything other than my name because you know it now.”

Their pointer fingers joined yet again. “It’s a deal, Keithy-boy.”

Keith rolled his eyes, though Lance could see he was having a hard time keeping the corners of his lips down. 

“How will we know who wins first though if I’m out of the empire?” Lance questioned.

“You can find me at  Aurelia’s bridge across the Dhahabu Falls, in the  Almasian red rock gardens.”

Lance eyed him curiously. Here he was, having a stranger propose meeting up in another kingdom in the future. And here he was, agreeing despite the many variables that could prevent the proposed meeting from occurring. Like the fact he was the prince next-in-line to the emperorship or that his schedule was decided for him so he wouldn’t know when he could ever actually journey there. He didn’t have time to plan everything out or worry, because the horn became more insistent outside. Lance was confident though that he would see the boy again. “I’ll see you there,” and the words came out like a fact rather than a hope. He beamed, nudging his shoulder playfully before standing to leave. 

A flint sparked in Keith’s eye, glinting. “Better start practicing saying my name until then.” 

“Don’t doubt the power of my curiosity, Keith.”

“See? You’re already doing great. Fantastic head start,” he deadpanned. 

Lance stuck his tongue out childishly. “I should return to calling you the Lord of Jackasses.”

Keith shrugged, expression blank. “It isn’t wrong.”

The hellhawk cry rippled through the buzzing air between them, this time close to them and the lake. 

“You should go, Leo.” 

When he heard that name, he couldn’t help but feel the churning of the monster, guilt, as it clawed at the insides of his gut. It had been born in the pits of his stomach when Keith had given him his real name and yet Lance hadn’t given his own in return. Instead, in order to hide his identity (since everyone in the empire knew of his name and it wouldn’t be hard to put two and two together, even if the empire hadn’t seen his face since his Kamani ceremony), he gave him one of his middle names and the nickname some of his family members called him.  _ Leo _ . It was the most real name Lance could give Keith.

“Thanks for helping us,” Lance said, letting the gratitude blossom brightly in his voice while trying to hide the guilt stirring in his expression. He cautiously helped Blue to her feet, glad that her pain was numbed. He carefully painted his usual lopsided grin across his cheeks, trying to hide the creeping doubts that this was the last time he would ever see the boy. He wouldn’t admit this, but he hoped that he would get to call the boy by his name again. “Till we meet again, Fireboy,” he said with a flourish and a bow of his head. 

Keith saluted in return. “Your royal highness.”

“Good luck, Keith,” he whispered into the air. 

And then he shut the door behind them, flashes of Keith’s subtle returning smile, the brief ribbons of wonder and curiosity and calculating that decorated his features at the sight of his masked sister outside, and those pools of indigo and shadows before they departed imprinting his mind. 

Lucina stood among the half-consumed bodies of the leos, her shoulders hunched and electricity curling along her arms like waves of golden vines, each of them writhing down to her trembling clenched fists. Lance approached behind her, catching the way her eyes had turned into medallions, catlike and sparking in the reflection of the lake, her mageia seeping out from her corneas to flit back and forth between the twisting ebony lace-like metal of her mask and the copper linings of her training suit. The feathers of her grand wings stood, dancing in the staticity of the air. 

Hesitantly, as if approaching a wild animal, “Lucina.” Then, after some silence, anxiously and rapidly, “Thank goodness you came because, well, as you can see, Blue and I had an epic battle with some leos. And I had the  _ strangest _ experience while on the other side with the ancestors; I’ll have to tell you all about it on the way back. However, now that you’re here, you must see that Blue is injured, and you can’t carry her, so how are we going to-”

“You’ll have to leave her, Leo.” Her voice was gentle and calm like a river of honey, a tone that he was used to coming from Hunk’s lips, but had never expected to hear from his sister. It had been years since she had spoken to him that way. 

Time stretched on, Lance wringing his hands and shuffling his feet. He wrapped a protective arm around his myriad, caressing her side. “But, Lucina-”

She whipped her head around swiftly, eyes blown wide and eyebrows raised. Seeing her expression clearly, Lance faltered. There was no anger there, as he had previously expected, but instead, something that scared him far, far more. Fear. She was tense, jaw quivering and pupils sprinting about, trying to compose herself but unable to do so. A silent tear of liquid dandelion clung to the cliffs of her dark eyelashes. Dread tickled his nerves. 

“It’s the Kerberos Mission. They’ve been compromised,” she whispered, brittle, choked, and rushed. 

Something dark and sinister crept into Lance’s gut, making his face contort and everything seem a little too bright and distant through his eyes. “What?” It had to be a mistake. Some of the most powerful magos in the empire were on that mission. No,  _ no _ . He had to be mistaken.

Lucina nodded, her resolve chipping and withering away with the movement. “Yeah,” she managed to choke out. Stronger, steely, “Yes. They got to them in the gefyra when they got back from the Kerberos mission. Coran has a concussion and is recovering from a siren’s sleeping spell in one of the pods. Samuel and Matt were captured. Colleen has become deaf and La’ei was blinded. Aurelia lost one of her hearts. Arell is…” she struggled to continue, “heavily injured. A-And Sebastian was captured as well.”

The lake continued to remain still as a storm sparked in Lance’s soul, making him tremble, a hand raised to his temple as he stumbled back a step. His vision blurred, the shadows of red ravenous revenge, steel screeching hellhawks, and churning yearning years of choking slate smoke on his charred harsh hypoxia-inducing horizon between lands of silver moons and marigold suns, making something monstrous give birth within his bones. Foreboding foes and the frozen fingers of consternation clawed at his mind. He was no longer there, but instead wrapping his own long digits around a faceless Lunaean and tearing away at them and the landscape and the war until he could drown in it. 

The Lunaeans were taking more from them, and though his father assured him that they were winning the war, it never felt like they did. No one really won a war. War was just a violent chess game of losses and losing for both sides.

“How bad is Arell?”

“He is paralyzed from the waist down. Allura and the medical team managed to stop the spread of a death dealer’s power, but they can’t reverse the damage already done and had to surgically remove his legs and wings. The nerves were shattered away by the Lunaean’s magic.”

Besides his parents; his half-siblings, Sebastian and Arell, were the strongest magos he knew, and the fact that they could probably burn down a whole capital together but yet ended up in this state against the Lunaeans sent a raining ice of terror down Lance’s spine. And not only were they defeated by the Lunaeans, but so was the Ace- the brains- of Altea and the whole empire: Samuel Holt, Pidge’s father. Never before had he felt so defenseless and powerless. 

Lance couldn’t help but think that it should’ve been him instead. He didn’t have mageia and was hence seen as worthless in the empire. Lance wished he could take their place and spare his siblings or Pidge’s family. Or at least La’ei’s sight. 

The corazonia assad leos didn’t seem so bad now. 

No,  _ no,  _ _ no _ . Lance had planned to go on the mission but had decided to stay back, hoping to get a chance to escape to Lake Amani before his trip and believing that it would be more worth his time to instead be trained by Pidge and Hunk. Now, this happened and he knew why. 

They were after him. The enemy thought that he would be on that mission. 

Perhaps he couldn’t protect his friends and family with mageia, but they could’ve been spared if he was there. The Lunaeans would’ve done what they wanted with him and left the others alone. 

As if she could read his mind, Lucina said, “This isn’t your fault, Lance. You don’t know what would’ve happened if you went and, knowing the enemy, things probably still would’ve ended up the same way, considering that it would benefit them to also attack the others. If you went, Pidge, Hunk, and I would’ve gone as well. You might’ve just saved us by not going.”

Now that, he had not expected. Lucina rarely spoke to him in such a compassionate tone. For a moment, he was young Lance again, watching his sister perform tricks with her mageia to amuse him and help calm him down from a bad nightmare.  

Lance knew that Lucina was right, but that didn’t stop him from crumbling further. “It should’ve been me, Lucia. At least they can fucking do so-”

“-This isn’t the time for blaming yourself. We need you more than ever, Lance.”

“And what can I do with my lack of mageia?”

Lucina sighed. “We made a mistake of hiding you from the public.”

“What do you mean?”

“A few of the underground conspiracists sold information about the Kerberos Mission to the Lunaeans in hope of getting you out of the way and gaining a different emperor in the future. We need your help getting the people on our side, especially since a lot of fear will be spreading through the empire after what happened to these powerful public figures. This trip is the perfect opportunity to do just that.”

“So, you essentially want me to charm the crowds and be a show-off? What I do best at?”

“Yes. I give you full permission to fully exhibit those otherwise annoying traits. We also need to discover your element and fast. I know that’s a lot of pressure but-”

“-I can do it. I will, for _ their _ sake.”

Lucina nodded. “Good.” Without another word, she placed a tracker on Blue and swept Lance up into her arms. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t you tell me about what happened in the other world?” She asked awkwardly, attempting to start a casual conversation between the two of them.

As her wings drummed to life behind them, stirring dust and sending a faint breath blowing between the leaves of the trees, the balls of her feet left the ground and they were in the air. 

Lance opened his mouth to start explaining but paused, letting his jaw fall closed. Lucina didn’t need anything else to worry about. If he brought up the drowning incident or Keith, she was sure to go into a whirlwind of panic, and Lance knew how extremely protective Lucina was. She would jump to conclusions, as he often did, and she would no doubt keep him from further investigating. So, instead, he lied. “I was there, but no one else was. And I couldn’t control anything. I must’ve done something wrong.”

“Done something wrong? You should speak with mother or your teachers. We can’t afford that now,” Lucina explained. Lance felt something sting in him at her harshness, but he knew that she was only being candid. She shook her head, sighing, when she saw the hurt flicker in Lance’s blue eyes. “I’m just glad that you’re alive. When I saw those leos, I thought that maybe they had gotten to you.”

It was strange to hear such words. Perhaps, despite their falling out, Lucina cared a lot more than Lance gave her credit for. She just showed it in different ways. A smile spread across his lips, genuine and fond. “I am too, Lucia ,” he said simply.

-

_ Helios’s  _ _ Chrysafénios  _ _ Palace, Lychnos Capital, Kingdom of Altea, Soleran Empire _

_ Solis, Kalendas Taurus, 1,500th Deca-Phoeb, 998 G.B. _

_ Three phoebs and six quintants until Lance’s 17th birthday _

Lance’s brother Arell was the “middle sibling of his older siblings”, with him being twenty and smack dab in the center between Lucina and Sebastian. Like Arell’s biological father, Azar; Lucina, and Sebastian, he had a fire-based element, but he could control neither fire nor lightning. Instead, he was what they call a ‘joker of light’ or an ‘illusionist’. In the eyes of someone else, it would seem like light was something tangible to him that he could bend and manipulate and shift, but, really, he couldn’t bend the reality of anything. He could only transform what someone saw through their eyes, tricking their receptors and brain into seeing a different light. Essentially, he had power over the sense of sight. 

Oftentimes, Lance’s mother would tell them stories about ancient tales that came from the planet Earth, where she, father, and Azar’s descendants lived on large islands and regions called Europe and Africa and the Middle East and Mexico and Cuba. She told him and his siblings about the gods and goddesses of that world, about the ancestors of Solerans that shared different names across the lands, dying when faith in them and mageia was destroyed. Then they were reborn on their own planet, spreading their seed and mageia to everyone so that all became like them. Hence, she gave all of her children nicknames that either fit their element or were their favorite deities of the stories. Arell was Apollo. He loved it. Whenever the children used to play gods and goddesses, Arell would always play Apollo, unlike the rest of them who mixed it up or derived from their nicknames. He would manipulate their eyes for a short period so that it looked like they were battling beastly monsters instead of Coran or the training robots. Lance and Arell always got the most into it, with Lance playing a variety of characters since he hadn’t yet received a god nickname from his mother and Apollo at his side. It was them against the world, or, rather, them against Lucina and Sebastian (playing as Shango and Agni or Catequil and Ra or Astrape and Vulcan or Fulgora and Prometheus) or the robot simulations from the other side of their makeshift fort in the training room. Apollo and Leo. The next-in-line and the grand ruler of the sun, light, and sight alike. Arell and Lance. 

Arell was the only one of Lance’s older siblings there for him after his Kamani ceremony. Sebastian was off to start his work as a captain at the Almasian Garrison in order to prepare for becoming the Jack of the capital kingdom, Altea, and Lucina had her sudden and obliterating falling out with him. 

As Lance blossomed into his elongating limbs and broadening shoulders and Arell into his knobby knees and chiseled face, their bond grew into a brotherhood, unyielding trust, and a strength like iron. Their bond was strong like how Arell was strong. 

And yet here Arell was, resting in a healing pod as if it were a coffin, his once gorgeous golden wings torn away and his legs gone beyond the length of his fingertips. Lance stumbled at the sight, his palm coming to rest on the thin wall of turquoise crystal that separated them. Beside his long digits, Arell’s face lay below, pale and blue behind the glass. Violet ash swept in two dark smudges under the curves of his eyes, his lips cobalt and his throat bruised with the ebony and indigo handprints of a death dealer. Lance’s hands curled. Fucking pythons. 

Even Apollo fell. Gods fall. 

Lance wasn’t a god. He was a bug. An imbecilic insect. Perhaps it was selfish that this thought plagued his mind as he stood before his half-dead half-there half-in-piece half-brother. That instead of completely delving into caring for his brother or taking action to get the others back or even go find someone to comfort, he was here fearing his own life. Because he was about to become emperor and this is what he would have to face. He would have to face worse. 

He gulped. By gods, he was a selfish coward. Lance shook away the rumbling train up his spine before it crashed into his couple of hearts and slumped to the floor against the pod. “I’m so sorry, Apollo,” Lance whispered, though he knew that Arell couldn’t hear him, no matter how loud he spoke. 

Lance didn’t really know what to say or what to do to help. Pidge was currently having a private conversation with her mother, now alone in their family with Samuel and Matt captured. His father was formally dealing with the aftermath. And all of his siblings had already visited the comatose Arell before he had arrived. 

So Lance sat there, the telltale prickle of rain threatening to fall beyond the pink fluffy clouds of his under eyelids. Exhaustion hit him deep in his bones and he realized suddenly how little sleep he had gotten and how much he had put his energy into. He was drained, both emotionally, physically, and mentally, with a bandaged gash into the tissue of his shoulder, still no mageia, and the weight of his friends and family heavy on his back. Everything ached and everything was slow. Empty and faded. 

With his head against the pod, he fell into a light nightmarish slumber plagued with ice, darkness, and the pained noises of his loved ones. 

When he awoke, his eyelids felt like they were being pulled down by the weight of a steel anchor glazed in zinc. The palace was quiet, with the only sound being that of glass heels clicking on the marble flooring. One of the tower bells chimed in the distance. Sunlight licked the floor in flaxen flames through the three slanted skylights along the ceiling, slicing Lucina and him each in half of a golden haze and half bluish shadow. 

Lucina sat against the windowed wall, only her hips and down gouged in the light. Her face was tilted back, hidden in the dark, her arms crossed across her chest. Lance could guess that she had come in earlier while he was sleeping and ended up passing out herself. The blue glow from the pod and torches on the wall danced across the length of her arm, the feathers of her curled wings, and the tips of her toes. She looked human. 

“I want to give him my wings,” she said, so softly that Lance wondered if it was just his imagination. Apparently, Lucina wasn’t asleep.

“He won’t accept them, Lucia.”

“I’ll sew them on myself.”

Lance remained silent. “What about you though?”

“I’d still have my legs. He wouldn’t.”

“You love to fly more than anything though.”

“I actually don’t.” Lucina lowered her gaze to his, head tilted in his direction as she spoke. “I love Arell more.”

“Don’t you think you should ask  _ Arell _ about what  _ he  _ wants?”

“He wants this but he is stubborn.”

“But, Lucina-”

“-You really don’t get a say in this.”

Lance gritted his teeth. “Why isn’t Arell out in the sun? This room hardly has enough sunlight to help him recover.”

“I don’t know, Lance.”

“They’re keeping everything from you too?” Lance asked, eyes wide.

“It’s probably for the best,” Lucina said, though Lance could tell that she was a bit upset by it too. 

“Do they not trust anyone?”

“I wouldn’t trust you either if I was them.”

“I’m the next-in-line!”

“ _ So?  _ It doesn’t mean you’re in charge yet.”

Lance snapped his jaw shut and hummed. 

The pulsing energy of the pod against his skull was humming. 

The air began to hum. 

“León y Oya, mis hijos de las tormentas.” In the doorway stood their mother, Empress Terra Araceli Candela. Silver peaked its weary head from the horizon of her scalp, heavy in the valley of her part and slowly chasing away the brown-black hue of her thick locks. Her shoulders and back were pulled straight with both strength and grace, holding her title with a sense of honour yet humbleness. Lance would’ve been fooled by her mask of tranquility and confidence had it not been for the fact that though her rogue lips were pulled into a calming smile of warm motherhood, the corners of her eyes didn’t wrinkle upwards with it. Something tired and pained stirred in the red irritated corners of her eyes and shaded the melting pennies of her irises. Dark puffy cones traced the curves of her eyeballs against her copper skin. 

Lucina blushed at her state and sat up straight. Lance didn’t.

“Mamá,” Lance sighed in happiness. His mother was his eye in the storm, always there and constant and calm and ready to laugh and share jokes or exchange embraces. She may have called the people near her the names of gods and goddesses but she was the true goddess in his heart- generous, peaceful, merciful, sweet, alive, beautiful, and like a fireplace in a cabin, shielding out the bitter cold. 

“¿Duermen ustedes dos bien?” 

Lucina’s eyes narrowed, speaking in her mother’s native language. “I couldn’t sleep with his snoring.”

“I had nightmares about being related to  _ her _ ,” Lance grumbled. “Oh wait, they were real.”

The Empress sighed. “At least you two are speaking,” she said, too exhausted to argue. Instead, she simply whispered, “Family has never been more important. It’s all we have.” To Lance, the statement was true. All he had was his family- Pidge and Hunk included. However, it must’ve been different for Lucina, who decided to stop being his family long ago, just like her father and Arell’s twin sister, Ariel. “Though lightning may shock the seas, both electricity and water are involved in the creation of storms.”

“And storms are good  _ how _ , Mamá?” Lance asked like the petulant child he knew he was, sinking further against the pod. As long as he was alone with his family and friends, he was usually permitted to act like himself. Though his posture would’ve been corrected by now had it not been for the circumstances. 

“There is no life without storms, mijo.”

“But they bring death and pain as well,” Lucina said solemnly, glaring at a dust bunny on the floor. 

Their mother smiled weakly. “Sebastián and Arell are strong, for they are my sons. They will get through this, and so will we.” Her weary smile and tired eyes were a testimony to the fact that she had probably spent the past hours trying to tell herself the exact same thing. 

As those words escaped her mouth, the empress’s eyes were on Lance. 

Coran stalked up behind the empress, Allura following him. “Good day, your excellence, your royal highness, your majesty,” he said with the flourish of a bow, addressing each of us. A bandage bridged across his forehead and temples and he held an ice pack to the front of his skull while the other hand held a stack of papers in a skin. “I believe that we are about ready to depart.”

“What?” Lance asked, quite intelligibly.

“We are to go on our trip throughout Solera.”

“Wait, still? We’re really still departing?”

“Why, of course, Lance! This will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to pass down to your future generations! My great-great-great grandfather once had the privilege of going on this same trip when he was your age and he said-”

“I know, but look around, Coran!”

Coran made a show of letting his eyes flit about their surroundings. “The palace may be splendid, but I’m sure you will enjoy what we have planned in the other kingdoms. A ball, a festival, parties, parades, shows, competitions, meetings, tours, various cultures, new sights, and plenty of knowledge to gain and people to meet!”

“Coran, that’s-” he sighed. “That’s not what I meant. We can't go.”

“And why not, m’lord?”

“You have a concussion, Aurelia lost a heart, Pidge’s whole family was either captured or wounded, the Ace has been taken, Hunk is caring for La’ei, Sebastian is gone, and, well, look!” He made a dramatic flailing gesture towards the pod where Arell laid. “Half of us aren’t physically well enough to attend and the rest of us are all an emotional wreck!”

Lucina rolled her eyes. “Lance, you knew that we would still have to go.”

“I didn’t know that we would have to leave  _ now _ . Haven’t we reached a detour in our plans?”

“Yes, but we can’t let the empire know that,” the Empress said, looking down at the ground. 

“So we plan to just  _ lie  _ to our people?” Lance asked, incredulous.

“It isn’t any different from what we’ve been doing for years now,” Lucina cut in. 

Lance was about to speak but stopped himself. Lucina was right. He had hidden from the public for almost four years now, lying to them all the while about his whereabouts, the reasons for his absence, and his status with mageia. And they were lying for the greater good, right? To prevent mass panic? It would explain why they kept Arell in here, instead of in one of the pods outside.

“I won’t see Arell recovered until I return?”

“He’s still coming with you,” Coran said. 

“Wait, he is?” It was Lucina’s turn to be shocked. She looked ready to argue, though she bit back her lip. Lance didn’t know how she could always just go along with everything, loyal and without question. Always trusting and always staying within her respectable boundaries. 

“Yes. Otherwise, the empire will find something off. We have to limit the public’s information as much as possible.” That explained why Arell was being kept indoors. 

“What about the ones that were captured?” Lance questioned.

Coran adjusted his silk black cravat. “Their families are keeping silent while we work to get them back. We will have to somehow come up with an excuse for Sebastian and Sam, with him being the Ace, but it is necessary to at least try. The public… already has enough against us.” 

Lance knew why there was that telltale ellipses decapitating Coran’s sentence. There was a definition in that pause.  _ The public is already against  _ you.  _ You’re already in the way so now we have to be extra careful.  _ Coran was too compassionate to tell the truth, though the implications hung in the room like a fog and weighed down on Lance’s shoulders, making his posture even more atrocious. 

Lance was technically supposed to be at the top of the hierarchy, yet here he was, feeling like he was at the bottom of the food chain. He felt any sense of control he once had slipping from his fingers like a life glass’s sand. 

It was up to him to fix this mess. And it all depended on his ability to charm the people and his E nilikíosi ceremony results. 

Coran frowned at Lance in a pitying way as he stood there, an Altean statue next to Princess Allura. Lance hated it; he hated the pity. “Well then,” Coran said, pulling out his ancient pocket watch from under his navy waistcoat (classic clothing from the Kingdom of Spathi, Coran’s home-kingdom). The kingdom’s symbol- clubs, a three-clover-like image- was engraved in the inside shell of it, with the name of his father and grandfather carved below. In the palms of his white gloves, the golden piece looked like the yolk of an orohen egg or like the blazon sun against the heavens. Its edge caught the sunlight and blue glow of the room in the web of its curved net. “We should head to the docks now, your highnesses,” he said, frowning at the time.

Lance rose, adjusting his circlet and the high collar of his blue cape. He straightened his back, putting an entirely genuine looking yet entirely fake smile on his face. “Of course,” he said, his voice steady. He thanked the gods for the fact that it hadn’t cracked despite the feeling of a pocket-watch sized lump ticking high in his throat. 

This was his job. Look strong. Put on a mask and play a part and give the empire hope, even when he had none to give. This is what he had been preparing for years. “Lead the way, Jack Coran.” He gave a slight bow.

The look of pity Allura and the Jack were giving him did not falter, for they could probably see passed the facade being in their similar positions, but they smiled back and strode out the corridor anyway. A few rose petals fell from the empress’s dress as she swung around before they dried and faded away into dust, new petals growing back. 

Lucina lingered behind, eyes locked on Arell in his living tomb. Lance waited behind, watching her gaze as it softened from its steel stoic stature. Then she turned to Lance and instantly hardened into harsh lines again when she noticed him scrutinizing her. “What?” She asked, frowning.

“Nothing,” Lance murmured. And then he stalked out, Lucina’s footfalls march-like behind him. 

  
-

_ A few klavoses Outside of Geb’s Topaz Palace: Nun’s River, Dunia Oasis, Kingdom of Almasi, Soleran Empire _

_ Solis, Kalendas Taurus, 1,500th Deca-Phoeb, 998 G.B. _

_ Three phoebs and six quintants until Lance’s 17th birthday _

“We will be arriving shortly, your highness,” Lance’s butler piped up, adjusting the collar of Lance’s cape. Lance grunted in response, his attention elsewhere. With a frown, he scrutinized Pidge, who was furiously typing away at her holographic keyboard, her skin pink and ears burnt from the sun. She was pointedly ignoring Mrs. Wordstroem, who was scolding her for her refusal of the maids who were supposed to help with the untamed mop on her head and her burnt skin. Lance couldn’t tell if Mrs. Wordstroem had heard the news or not- she would’ve acted the same either way. She was that type of insensitive person. 

“Mrs. Wordstroem, leave this to me, the master of physical beauty.” Lance cocked his head in her and the maids’ direction, giving his signature dimpled grin that he knew made the knees of both men and women weak. Mrs. Wordstroem wouldn’t fall for it because she clearly didn’t have a soul, but she would be annoyed enough to want to leave and it would surely convince the maids into letting him take control of Pidge’s appearance. 

Pidge snapped her head to Lance and though he couldn’t see her eyes behind the light bouncing off of her spectacles, he could tell that she was glaring vehemently behind them. She probably would’ve growled or quipped at the prince had it not been for Mrs. Wordstroem’s presence. 

Mrs. Wordstroem narrowed her eyes at Lance. She was obviously annoyed, but not enough. He would have to do more to make her storm off in fear of losing control of her calm expression. 

“You and these  _ lovelies _ ,” he said, winking at the maids, “should go relax in the commons room. You’ve all been working so hard and I don’t want any of you to get motion sickness- Allura and the other healers won’t be able to help you since they are all asleep or getting ready, unfortunately. I’ll handle this stubborn one.”

“Your Highness-” Mrs. Wordstroem began. 

Lance held up a hand. “Really, it isn’t a problem. I appreciate all you have done, but you must be  _ exhausted _ . Don’t worry, I’ll still be here when you’re back.” He almost gagged as he said the words. It was hard to be pleasant to such a nasty woman. It wasn’t always easy to be this charming. 

The older woman sighed, lips pursed. “Ladies, thank the prince on your way out.” 

“Don’t miss me too much, Mrs. Wordstroem,” Lance said, trying not to chuckle. He enjoyed the way that her face exploded into a red flurry of anger and considered making a comment about her flush or her lack of thanks herself but thought better of it. Though he desperately wanted to get revenge on her for all that she had done to him and Pidge over the years- especially the comments about Lance’s mageia, their sexualities, and Pidge’s gender expression- he was not about to get into another fight with Allura, who would call out on his immaturity. He was surprised that she hadn’t already. 

Three girls around his age shared their thanks, one of them stoic and unaffected by Lance’s charms. Two out of three was good enough for him though. 

A fourth girl then came up red-faced and when she bowed, Lance feared that she would fall over. “T-Thank you, your royal highness.”

“No problem, darling. Anything for a beautiful girl like yourself.” He grinned again for the effect and watched her smile, stutter another thanks, and then scurry out of the room, rosy-cheeked and stumbling as she shut the door behind her. Poor girl didn’t know what hit her. She probably wasn’t used to having anyone flirt with her, being around fifteen, let alone  _ the  _ prince. 

“Must you flirt with  _ everyone _ ?” Allura questioned, fingers turning a page of the ancient Altean book she read without glancing up at Lance. 

Lance cocked his head to the side, leaning his hip against one of the marble columns in the room. “What,  _ jealous _ ? Would you rather I flirt with you? Call you darling?” He smirked. 

“No, not at all,” she said, rolling her eyes with a gentle smile on her lips. “But we are engaged, and I don’t want the empire getting the wrong idea.”

“For your information, princess, I was saving Pidge over here.”

She glanced over at Pidge, eyebrows pinched in confusion and worry. “How… uncharacteristically selfless of you.”

“Hey, I am plenty selfless!” 

The Altean princess’s lips twitched, a smile being held back. “Of course.”

“Thank you!” He paused. “Wait, was that sarcasm?”

“No, no it wasn’t, Lance.” And the true answer was evident. 

Lance made a noise that was half a gasp and half an indignant squawk. “It was. Wow, thanks, Allura.”

“You’re welcome.” She shut her book and stood. “I’m exhausted from earlier, so if you’ll excuse me,” she said, heading toward the door.

“Of course, Allura. Go recharge. Sweet dreams, buttercup.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” she muttered. “Thanks, Lance.” 

Being engaged to the most beautiful girl in the empire did not necessarily mean that she was Lance’s. The great ‘romance’ between them that he had spent years longing for a chance to experience with someone like his parents had was nonexistent. He used to be serious about the princess when he was younger and she had grown up as his first  _ wobbly jelly legs, flush at simply their presence, daydream about a fairytale kiss, let’s try those terrible pick-up lines you came up with when you were bored in math class  _ type of crush when the hormones first kicked in, but then that alien-noble, Nyma, showed up and he was falling again, followed by a brief confusing period of blushing and stuttering near the cute stable boy, then a more aware flirting with Sven, and a bit of pining for both of the Bachelor twins. And Allura was always in the back of his mind because he still kept hope that one day they would have their own fairytale ending but his feelings grew dull over the years. He saw her as one of his closest friends and now the flirting was more routine joking between the two than anything. It never meant anything, not to Allura. And it hadn’t meant much to Lance either these days- except for the fact that he had realized how tightly he had held on to his seed of attraction for the princess in order to convince himself that he really was in love with her and that they were going to get married one day and that he would be happy. 

Truthfully, Lance didn’t know a thing about love. He wasn’t in love with her. And nor could he imagine himself or Allura being truly happy. 

The childish fantasies of a younger version of himself. 

When she left, he finally let out the gag he had been holding in during his conversation with Mrs. Wordstroem. “It is so difficult to act friendly with Wordst-” he began, turning to Pidge. He expected to see a look of victory across her features or at least a thanks forming on her lips but instead, he was met with a fury similar to that of Mrs. Wordstroem. “What?” He said instead, eyebrows furrowing. 

“What are you doing?” She asked, fingers curling over her keyboard and eyes fixated on the screen before her, though she wasn’t really looking at anything. “Joking around and, heaven forbid-” she snapped her head towards him. “-Flirting?”

“I did it for you!”

She ignored him. “How can you stand around and act like everything is okay?” She looked ready to charge, her golden-brown eyes blossoming viridescent at the edges. 

“That’s my job, Pidge.”

“So you just pick and choose your jobs?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll put on a face for the crowds but you don’t fight against the Lunaeans. You don’t do anything. Hell, you have had one job these past few years. Discover your element, and  _ look _ at you-”

“I tried!”

“Well maybe you should’ve tried harder and stopped relying on Hunk and Allura and me to comfort and pity you and protect you and fucking find all of these tricks to try, places to go, people to see, and elements to take a stab at for you.” Lance tried to have his heart dodge that one but it hit straight on. He never wanted to hurt or inconvenience anyone and he honestly thought that Pidge and the others had done what they had done for him because they enjoyed it or were happy to so. He never wanted this. “Speaking of which, I hope you know that I wasn’t doing it for you. I was doing it for the empire. I did more than you ever did.”

Lance felt something launch its way into his throat. He tried to push it down, hoping that it wouldn’t travel to his eyes. He needed to keep face. He couldn’t break here, not in front of Pidge. Not now, when she was probably only trying to break him because she was broken. Not now, when he needed to be strong to fix his mistakes. Not now, when Pidge was revealing the way she truly felt all of these years. 

Lance wanted to cry, but instead, he laughed, the sound coming out cracked and pitiful to his ears. “Why are you so angry? Aren’t you glad that they are gone so that now you can focus on… whatever you are doing?”  _ Please, can we just go back to before all of this, when I would brush your hair out of your face as we snacked on Hunk’s baked goods and you worked on your genius projects?  _ is what he really wanted to say, but the words would never leave.

How could they return after Lance knew this? Things would never be the same. Knowing himself, he would probably feel so guilty that he would avoid Pidge for the rest of his life in fear that he would make the same mistake again.

Now her eyes were definitely green. That was a bad sign and Lance could see her physically trembling in an attempt to hold back her mageia from pouring over. The girl had a difficult time keeping such immense power in such a small body, especially when her emotions got crammed in there with the mix. Her brain was full enough as it was. “Actually, yes. Because now I can focus on fixing  _ your _ mistake.”

“How is this my mistake?” Lance asked it, even though he knew the answer. He just hoped that he would’ve made a mistake, that he really was the only one who thought this was all his fault. Then, it would be easier to move on and he wouldn’t feel so guilty. If Pidge blamed him for what happened to his family though, he wouldn’t know how to continue onwards. 

Pidge shook her fist and pointed a finger at him, chin jutting out. “Their mission got sold out and my family got captured because  _ you _ couldn’t discover your element.”

That’s when Lance felt himself crumble. Crumble like the pyramids of Almasi. Like the geyfra in between the two empires. Like Arell’s wings and legs as they began to turn into a death dealer’s dust. All Lance had in his life was his family, with the empire being against him, little talent, and no mageia. Perhaps he had power, but it was balanced on a spider’s gossamer, an inexperienced acrobat ready to fall into the abyss below at any second. There was no doubt that that power could be stripped from him in a second. 

And here he was, losing his family. The columns of his roof were shattered and he knew that he wasn’t strong enough to hold up the sky alone. Lucina had returned to avoiding him, his father was gone as per usual, Arell was half-dead, Sebastian was gone, and now Pidge was falling out too. Soon enough, Lance would be squashed beneath the weight of the sun. 

“Guys.” Lance barely heard the voice though and continued to talk over it. He was distant and upset and not really there. He was shocked and frozen and shipwrecked in a vast sea. 

And then everything snapped in place, his heart ramming back into motion as he flinched at her words before leaning forward, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched. And suddenly, he was shipwrecked in a storm. Still at the moment as he watched the cannon hit and then wildly racing into war. 

He had to try to convince himself that this wasn’t his fault, as Lucina had said. Otherwise, he really would collapse. “Pidge, I have no control over when I discover my element. I’ve tried everything and a lot of it has to do with fate-”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatever, Lance. I don’t need any lessons from you. I was the one that taught you most of this stuff, remember?”

It hurt. “Stop looking at me like I’m some idiot!”

“I look at you like you’re an idiot because you are an idiot! If I wanted to die, I could just jump from the level of your ego to your IQ.”

“ _ Guys. _ ”

It hurt a lot. “Well, well at least I’m not the size of a shrimp! If I wanted to die, I could just jump from your IQ to your height.” 

“Great job, Lance. Not only can you not do math, discover your element, or be mature, but you can’t even properly make comebacks.”

“You’re going to argue with me about being mature? I was going to help you with your hair and you could’ve kept working but I guess not! Enjoy being embarrassed!”

“Unlike your egotistical self, I don’t care about something so superfluous as appearances.”

It hurt like hell because though Pidge insulted him often, she was rarely serious or angry about it. It hurt like hell because Lance believed every word of it. Because it was true. But though he knew Pidge was probably just hurting as well, with everything that happened to her family, the thing she valued most, he kinda wanted to hurt her back. To show her how she made him feel, even if it proved her point. “Unlike your unworthy self, I don’t have to listen to this. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m your superior and one day you will be serving-”

“ _ Guys _ !” This time, Lance couldn’t ignore the voice because suddenly sand was being poured down his and Pidge’s shirts. 

In sync, they swung their heads around to find Hunk in the doorway.

“What the hell, dude?” Lance asked, doing a dance as he tried to shake out the uncomfortable sand from his shirt. Unfortunately, it was damp, and hence it clung to his skin like dew on the grass. 

“Listen to yourselves,” he said, his voice stern and so unlike its usual beaming quality. A tray laid abandoned on one of the seats, three mountainous brownies with cookie crumbs, nuts, and chocolate syrup decorating them to make them look like the Almasian Mountains sitting on top. Three flags with the Almasian flag jutted from the peak of each. The innocent joy found in those delicacies was stark against Hunk’s apparent frown and the other two’s earthquake of a conversation. “You guys are letting your fear take over you and are taking it out on each other! Today sucked. That’s an understatement. It has probably been the worst day of your guys’ lives. But you guys are friends, and instead of pushing each other down so that you don’t drown, you either hold each other up or sink together. We need each other more than ever now, so don’t do this. Please speak when you guys have calmed down and sorted through your emotions.” 

“I’ll speak to him when my family is back.”

Hunk smiled warmly, sympathy radiating from him like heat. "Know that you have family here too,” Hunk said, glancing at Lance. 

Pidge scrutinized Hunk and then peered at Lance.  “Lance is no family.” And then Pidge turned on her heel, ready to walk out on their conversation.

“Wait, Pidge.” Lance reached for her wrist to try and stop her only to have his hand promptly tied back to a chair with a sudden shooting vine. When Pidge looked back, green fury boiled in her eyes- though Lance could see the bags under them, the paleness of her face, and the tremor in her knees. The intensity of her glare was lost in her obvious fatigue. He could almost see her gaze cracking like glass when she saw his expression, weak like the hold of the vines around his wrist. Then she looked away. “Don’t touch me,” she snapped, storming out of the room with her holographic projector, Rover, in her clenched fists. 

Hunk sighed, placing one of his large palms on Lance’s shoulder. “She needs her space, Lance. She’s not in the right mind right now and she won’t be able to calm down until she is by herself. Don’t take what she said seriously.”

Lance collapsed onto one of the lounge chairs, groaning. “I know.”

“Then why did you bite back?” There was no judgment in his voice, just understanding, like he already knew the answer. This is why Hunk was his best friend. He always seemed to know what to say and was always made of the sweetness of the baked goods he created. He could easily steer Lance in the right direction of his thoughts- gentle and not forceful. 

And though Lance knew he knew the answer, he found himself speaking anyways. He needed to get it out. “Because… I’m angry with myself. Because I was trying to convince myself that she was wrong so that I wouldn’t end up breaking. Because I lost people too but I have to be strong for everyone.”

“Why did you say that last thing? About you being her superior?” Hunk shook his head. “I know you didn’t fully mean it, buddy, because you were upset, but that was a pretty hurtful thing to say.”

“I know, I owe Pidge an apology. I guess I said it because… I don’t know. Why are we talking about this?” Lance hated speaking about emotions. 

“Because I know you and you won’t address them unless I push you to. Now, Pidge wasn’t the only one pushing another down in an attempt to not drown?”

Lance sighed dramatically, flopping the back of his hand onto his forehead. “Yeah, yeah. You’re right. I said that to make me feel more in control of the situation. Everyone makes me feel so weak. What she said made me feel weak. And I’ve never felt so powerless in my life and I thought that saying that would make me feel better.”

“Did it?” 

“No.” He slumped in his seat.  _ ‘Just made me remember that the weight of the empire is on the shoulders of a worthless, mageia-less, and idiotic coward _ ,’ he thought to himself. 

“What happened isn’t your fault.”

“But isn’t it?” Lance paused, shaking his head. A tight-lipped smile cracked on his face and he sat up straight. “It doesn’t matter though. Whether it is or isn’t my fault, we still have a problem to solve. It’s better that I start looking for solutions than dwelling on this.”

“Now that’s the mindset of an emperor.” 

Hunk smiled and Lance beamed. 

Then the windows went dark with sand.

 

-

 

- _ Keith _ -

_Ch’ang-O’s Eunsaek Palace,_ _Eodum Capital, Kingdom of Kuutsuki, Lunaean Empire_

_ Solis, Kalendas Taurus, 1,500th Deca-Phoeb, 998 G.B. _

_ Six phoebs and one quintant until Keith’s 18th birthday _

All Lunaeans had stars that appeared on their skin for each person they loved.

Stars were loves. Keith didn’t have many. Two dead ones near his heart, one on the inside of his right wrist, another on the curve of his shoulder, and three ones orbiting the edges of his sangjing birthmarkings. Those three ones on his back were all splintered and began to drift away from the spot where his heart rested between his lungs in the form of shooting stars- streaks of unshed tears streaming as white scars. 

Luneans weren’t guaranteed to know which love of theirs belonged to each star, but usually, people could figure it out by the significance of their placement, their size, how bright they shone, and how it changed with the growth of a relationship. Because Keith didn’t have many constellations darting across his pale skin, he had known since their birth which trio belonged to this cluster of freckles- all close together and yet broken. Their instability, peculiar dimness, and the sick feeling that came when he brushed his fingers over them just further confirmed their unholy names. 

He didn’t need to wish on his stars for them to break. 

Keith’s stars also rarely glowed. They looked like the average blemishes of a human skin, like the snowflakes speckled across Leo’s cheekbones and the bridge of his nose (though Keith didn’t consider those blemishes on Leo’s skin)- freckles, moles, and scars- the only attribute differentiating them from being average markings being the humming of emotions he felt when he touched them. 

His old teacher a passed speck on the skin above his acromion bone. Shiro a dark purple mole carved into the curve of his wrist that he found himself rubbing his thumb along whenever he needed reassurance that he wasn’t alone, that he had family out there. His biological mother and father rested as two light freckles above his heart that hadn’t shone since he had been separated from them. He could classify them as a white dwarf and a supernova- intertwined and gone from the sky where the boy cradled in the nebula now lay. 

Keith didn’t have one that represented himself. He had plenty of room on his skin but not plenty of love in his heart. At least not towards the boy he was born as. 

Lotor’s brightest and biggest star was grand and suited for a prince, quite unlike Keith’s bland markings. It was a sharp black diamond on his bicep with silver swirls curling around and out of it against his amethyst skin- his “majesty” star, his greatest love. 

And it made Keith want to vomit because it was Lotor’s love for himself. 

Though everyone else thought it was his undying love for the empire or his betrothed, General Acxa, Keith knew the truth. Lotor had gained it as soon as he had the ability to love himself, even before he met Acxa or really learned about the empire. Plus, though his family said otherwise to the public about their markings, Keith highly doubted that a star could be the love of an empire. It was unheard of, and if they did indeed love their empire so, it wasn’t the people that they cared for but the land, wealth, and power that came with it. 

That damn star was right in front of his face, the silver tails of it luminescent and sending a white glow against the ice of the sword in Lotor's palm. Keith wanted to step out of its light- even if it was dim in comparison to the magenta glow of the lights in the wall panels. He didn’t want to be in the light of his brother when he was already in his harsh shadow. 

“Why hello, brother,” Lotor said, his R's dropped and vowels soft. His accent was thick- one that Keith didn’t share due to learning their language from different sources. And it wasn’t one that most Kuutsukians had, though their parents had the same lilt to their voice. Lotor’s lips curled into a smile that would always be wicked in Keith’s eye no matter the circumstances. 

Keith hated being over a head shorter than his brother (curse the fact that Lotor got Galran height where he received a below-average human height from the gene pool) because that reminder of his bleeding narcissism was always in his face. Though, his icy violet eyes weren’t something he wanted to see either. He tilted his head up, expression blank and barricading in the betraying fear that sizzled inside him. He held the gaze and refused to falter. Any signs of intimidation and Keith was over for. It was difficult even though he considered himself a master of blocking his emotions from his face and Lotor seemed to have the uncanny ability to see the slightest of twitches. Sometimes, the boy wondered if his brother could see into souls or read minds. Either that or he could smell the slightest twinge of fear.

He struggled to not gulp. Keith considered himself a brave person, reckless even, but Lotor always got into his head and toyed with the fears of his child self. He felt like his younger self again, yanking against the ice Lotor once restrained him in. Except he was even more scared because Lotor was no longer the child killing defenseless creatures in the woods for his own joy but instead a calculating machine that did their crimes behind the scenes and away from sight. His innocent facade was unsettling. 

“Lotor.” He nodded in acknowledgment. Keith paused and he sensed that it was a tad too long but was glad that Lotor doesn’t pick up on it. “How is Acxa?” He asked, knowing damn well that Lotor had not gone to go see his betrothed like he said he would. Who the hell visits their fiance with their battle sword? 

Lotor ignored the question, smirking. “What is your latest project, Akira?” He asked, looking at the pair of goggles that rested on Keith’s forehead. 

Of course, his brother knew. Keith always wore his goggles and his hair up in a ponytail or bun whenever he was working. He also didn’t doubt that he had a good amount of soot and grease on his clothing. One subtle sniff and he could tell that he smelled of gasoline and metal. “I was just taking an engine apart and putting it back together,” Keith lied, though his gaze was steady and his shoulders back as if he weren’t.

“Interesting.” Lotor’s eyes narrowed. “You should get changed. That is no attire a prince should wear.”

Keith kept his eyes on Lotor, refusing to look down at his outfit, instead glaring. He was wearing the usual attire he wore when he was working on any of his projects or training by himself in the “ruins” by the border- combat boots, ripped skinny jeans, a t-shirt, and fingerless gloves all in black or dark gray; Shiro and his biological mother’s silver dog tags around his neck, pouches (one carrying his dagger and pocket knife) clinging to his hips and the sides of his legs from his belt, with one strapped to his thigh further down; and his classic red jacket- the one with the red stripes running down his arms and the long band of yellow across his chest. Thankfully he had taken off his dirtied apron, which now lay on the floor of his makeshift hideout on the geyfra bridge. 

Hints of glowing neon red and gold decorated him, resembling the high-tech technology of Lunae and the style of the people of Tuutsuki- but definitely not that of a prince. Keith didn’t feel like a prince, never did. He wasn’t meant to be one anyways. Wasn’t born into royalty. 

“I will.”

Then, suddenly, Lotor announced, “Takashi is under my jurisdiction now. Father’s too busy to have to deal with that witch’s mongrel.” 

Keith felt his stomach drop. He felt his brain click into auto-pilot mode with his responses, finding himself not in that hallway anymore. 

The prince’s whole being froze like ice. His soul decided to ditch the whole ‘keep your expression blank’ strategy and was already calculating ways to protect Shiro instead. His legs were not here, but instead running Shiro as far away from this dark palace as possible. Nor were his arms present, for they were already reaching for the nearest weapons in his mind. Apparently his torso was absent for this vital moment as well, as the muscles that formed them insisted on coiling in their state of high potential energy, ready to make it kinetic at any second and turn his back on all of this, ready to be stabbed- either by giving his back to Lotor or by using that back to protect his true brother. 

Unfortunately, it seemed that his heart loved to always be in attendance because it wouldn’t  _ shut up  _ inside of his chest. It was entirely there, to Keith’s utter dismay, and it liked to make it painfully obvious by hammering against drums and dropping loudly into his gut. It was hard to jump-start a half-there brain when a wholly-there heart was insistent on taking the wheel and running the vehicle into a wall. 

“Of course,” he heard himself say in his turmoil. 

“You know what that means, don’t you, Akira?” Of course he fucking knew, and he knew that Lotor knew it to be so. He just enjoyed twisting the dagger in further and igniting Keith’s fire like a key in the ignition. And it wasn’t the good kind of fire- passion, ambition, desire, that  _ fuel  _ making him run, and the way he seemed to burn when a handsome boy spoke to him, like when that pretty blue-eyed Leo bantered with him back and forth. This kind of fire was a wicked dangerous kind- the kind that got him in trouble, that got him kicked out of the Garrison for punching a kid when he made a comment about his dead parents. 

Keith nodded, not trusting his voice for fear of saying something impulsive in his rage. The few he had loved in his life he was extremely protective of, and for good reason. People he loved always got hurt. Combined with his trust issues and brooding lone-wolf persona that Shiro always teased him for, it made Keith distant and push people away in fear of loving and losing them. 

Keith could guess that Lotor could see him cracking for then he leaned in and said, “It means that I can do whatever I want to him now. I needed some new test subjects for my ice. We gained some new prisoners today, but I think we could use one more lab rat.”

That’s when he snapped. The fire grew, unfortunately making his face red with rage. In one second, it went from a pit fire to a forest fire. “Listen here you fucking-”

Lotor tsked, a small smile on his lips that was more like eyes looking down on Keith. It was almost a look of pity, though Keith knew that it wasn’t really. It was more mocking than anything. “Now remember who has the power here. Remember what I can do to you now. To  _ him _ .  _ Them. _ ”

Keith shut his mouth.

“Apologize.”  _ Apologize my ass.  _ He knew that he had to do it though, for Shiro, and for those prisoners. 

“I’m sorry, your highness,” Keith hissed through gritted teeth.

Lotor patted his head as if he were some pet. “Good mutt.” Then Lotor walked passed him and down the hall, his whistling and footsteps echoing against the polished flooring. 

This is why Keith felt powerless. It didn’t matter how much training he did or how strategic he was or how advanced in combat he was. He didn’t have mageia and he didn’t have control of the strings. He was constantly walking on Lotor’s ice, about to slip or about to crack the fragile glass, sending everyone and everything he loved into the water below as he was stuck there, frozen, the child watching the  _ criceta catulum  _ being tortured.

As the last notes of the tune Lotor was whistling faded out, Keith recognized the song with a jolt.  _ Teru Teru Bozu _ . 

Oh, how he wanted to pull out the ink pen holding his bun up and stab Lotor’s eyes out with it. Perhaps use his blood as ink to blot out his damn existence. 

He had just arrived back at the palace and he already wanted to be back in Solera. Back in the trunk of that tree making truces and teasing that gorgeous golden boy surrounded by glowing forget-me-nots and vermillion lighting and smiles like sunshine and light and warmth and life. And two of the biggest stars he had ever seen: the sun and Leandro. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: I changed Lance's middle name (and hence the name he gave Keith) from Leonardo to Leandro because of everything going on. He still has people call him Leo. I also wasn't satisfied with Keith's character at the end so I did some heavy editing on that part. 
> 
> Apologies for the angst in this chapter. Unfortunately, I'm not nearly over with torturing you all. :) 
> 
> Thanks for reading, everyone! I appreciate all of the comments and kudos. It really helps me edit and fix my writing or know if I should continue something. I still can't believe that I'm at 750 hits. I honestly wasn't even expecting to get even a third of that, so thank you. Have a splendid day, everyone!


	6. Smoke and Ice; Scorpios and leos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Smoke and ice. Scorpios and leos.  
> Keith has a hard time finding a way to channel his anger and Shiro tries to help. A ball occurs.

- _ Keith _ -

_Ch’ang-O’s Eunsaek Palace,_ _Eodum Capital, Kingdom of Kuutsuki, Lunaean Empire_

_ Solis, Kalendas Taurus, 1,500th Deca-Phoeb, 998 G.B. _

_ Six phoebs and one quintant until Keith’s 18th birthday _

Keith liked silence. Loud noises and bright lights often gave him migraines or overwhelmed him easily. He enjoyed having his space and preferred being alone or in the company of few. But perhaps some characteristics only went so far or were only so true. After all, living in such a quiet and lonely place, it was best that he was this way. And having gained so few and  lost so many people in his life, not only was he born this way and was used to this way of living, but maybe it was some sort of defense mechanism to protect him against the rare joys of anything else. Of losing again.

But now standing in the Capitol’s Castle, Keith found himself shivering in the lack of heat and squinting against the dimness. It was too dark and too drab and too silent and too freezing cold, leaving him drifting with a sense of emptiness as the castle’s atmosphere simulated the deep vastness of space- which, though vast, felt like a cage. There was so much air in the rooms that it felt like he was low on oxygen, the air stuffy and thin. The towering ceilings of the palace that expanded to the sky felt just as suffocating as the metal winding tunnels dug into the earth, despite the size difference. In the grand castle, there was no color, no life. No company. It was quite isolating, the halls seeming to go on forever with not a single living soul in sight. Only the sentries marched the halls, metal against metal making his ears protest. 

It was so lonely. So fucking lonely. Which was rare for him to admit, though true since the day he lost his parents. He was utterly alone in this world, and though he enjoyed being wrapped in a blanket of silence and space and solitude, the blanket was not a comfort when everything already was silence and space and solitude. If silence was the absence of sound then silence could not exist without sound to eliminate. If space was the distance between him and others, then space could not exist if there was no one to have a distance between. If solitude was the state of being away from the presence of others, then solitude could not exist without others to be away from. 

That was true loneliness. Being away from people he didn’t even have. And it hurt. He hardly knew what it was like to have people, friends, family, a home. Being a  _ one  _ was what he knew best. 

He got a taste of laughter and now everything is bitter. He got a flash of sunlight and now everything is darker. He got a sip of smiles and now he finds his fixed scowl deeper than before. He got a spark of color and now everything is gray. He got a drop of company and now he’s clawing at it more than ever before. 

It didn’t help that even though it was silent now, with Shiro off in a private meeting with Lotor and Leo, a mere stranger, back over the wall, his thoughts were louder than ever. The blanket he often clung to like a shield was too heavy, the fabric binding him and dragging him into the ocean to drown. And in this darkness, he couldn’t see a thing. There was no lifehouse, there never was. That fact was just more clear in the absence of stars. 

This feeling of suffocation wasn’t new. It was locked away and ignored in order to prevent his flame from being stomped out, instead turned into action that drove his hands to move, his legs to run, and his body across the walls. After being surrounded by fire though, his flame looked pitiful and he could see in its full glory of flickering and dim light. Dammit, his flame was going to die if he kept this blanket.

Flinging himself down from the ledge he perched on, he took a few brisk strides to his bed and yanked a loose metal panel upwards from the floor. He immediately launched his torso into the chasm that was left there, thrashing about tools and trinkets and personal belongings in search of his paints. His fingers twitched for the need of color, of his paint-dipped digits sprinting across a canvas, the walls, his body, anything, to get what was inside out and away before it ate him up. Keith’s breath came out in quick shallow huffs, an exasperated groan escaping his lips when it was taking longer than he thought. With a growl, he slammed the panel shut.  _ Fuck. Where are his paints? _

He needed to do something.  _ Anything _ . Blue didn’t suit him. He was desperate for a way to channel it into something scarlet- into anger, into movement, into bursts and a drive towards a goal. His skin crawled and shivered with pent-up energy as if it were a lightbulb getting a higher voltage of electricity than necessary. He was going to burst and shatter and burn- he felt himself, right on the ridge of that cliff- if he didn’t do something  _ right now _ . Pacing the corridors of the palace wasn’t enough, instead he felt himself wind up like the clockwork motor of a toy with each step and crank to his key. He was boiling- his insides, his blood- and they threatened to bubble over the rim, steam shooting upward. 

He didn’t even realize that he was in the training rooms until he heard a  _ swoosh _ before him, a dull ache pulsing in his palm from slamming his hand against the handprint recognition pad. Nor did his brain notice the movement of his arm whipping his red and white sword from its plaque on the wall until he was swinging and lashing at the designed training robots. By the time he had launched himself at one of the robots and successfully decapitated it, his brain was still miles behind. It wasn’t even there anymore. 

Instinct, repetition, and fire drove him. His muscles took over, no longer consulting his mind on strategy in how to defeat all of the robots to move onto the next training level. Instead, fury seeped through him and his movements, making them sharp and strong but reckless and clumsy. They weren’t planned out and were instead a wild dance of slashing aimlessly with as much force he could. He didn’t care about making it to the next level. Being able to play with a fucking metal sword wasn’t going to do anything against someone who could simply use their mind to send ice piercing you every which way. It didn’t matter anymore. All that mattered was getting all of it out. 

His actions were violent and chaotic, creating thin lines in the robots’ armour but actually successfully defeating few. His whole body was in it- legs thrashing and jumping, muscles coiling and pouncing, glare burning and scratching, and his unoccupied hand grabbing and clawing at each target. 

He couldn’t do anything. The only family and friend he had was in a room alone with his sadistic psychopath of a brother, being forced to sign a contract that he knew nothing about. He could imagine Shiro hooked up to those machines, signing his signature into his own skin with a dagger in his shaking hands before Lotor did the same (probably deeper and slower) with his own name, Shiro’s body limp and half-conscious. Threats were probably being whispered, threats that if Shiro went against, another domino would be punished.

Keith wanted to scream to him. He wanted to beg Shiro to let him take his place, to save himself even if that meant Keith living a worse fate. But Keith knew Shiro, and though his true brother often teased him for his stubbornness, Keith knew who was the more stubborn one. Shiro would not let anyone get harmed to protect himself. Selfless to a fault. 

And Keith knew better. There was probably a whole row of dominoes behind him that would fall as well. The prisoners in the cells. Shiro’s friends. Really, everyone close to Shiro. Other “witch’s mongrels”. And probably, just to go further, everyone close to them as well. 

If only it was so easy. If only Keith could just slip into the promises of a sweet siren’s lullaby of death. He wasn’t afraid of death, nor was he necessarily opposed to the option, but he couldn’t let himself die unless there would be no one who would suffer from it as well. And there was one person who would. Takashi Shirogane. So Keith couldn’t kill himself, that much was certain. 

It wasn’t like Lotor would kill Shiro if Keith killed himself. A disgusting dark pit in himself wished that he could just… end it, for his brother. What he was going through now was so much worse than death. It made him want to hurl at the thought that he wouldn’t feel nearly as punished if Shiro died rather than if he lived on in pain. That’s why Lotor kept him alive- as a refusal to end his suffering. That’s why Keith could not take the easy route, because Shiro would continue to live in infinite torture and so would everyone Shiro loved, while Keith could lay in peace for eternity and never see a thing of it again. 

Screams and flashes of images seared through his mind. He wasn’t frozen watching animals die anymore. Now he was frozen watching humans being tortured. Now he wished he could go back to the animals and at least be able to gasp a breath of air at the relief of their pain ending. 

His constant unyielding acid stream of intrusive thoughts only made him more angry. At Lotor for goddamn existing. At his parents, who didn’t stop their son because they were worse. At Shiro for being selfless. 

At himself for having such horrible thoughts. For ever befriending Shiro, putting him in more danger. For being a mutt and probably the creation of a witch. For not having mageia. 

For not being able to do a fucking thing. 

Nothing was helping. The restlessness in his skin seemed infinite and growing with every second, his shadows nipping at his heels and unable to find relief in the aching of his muscles and joints or the sharp pain that came from the robots’ pain simulators- their own weapons making invisible cuts and slashes across his skin even though their swords and guns went through him like the fingers of ghosts. He didn’t order the simulation to end as he was supposed to once he had been hit, instead relishing in the blooming pain across his back as a robot took a slash to it, the mark it made glowing fucsia against the trio of betraying stars and his sangjing birthmarkings before it faded. A groan bordering scream tore from his throat and he swirled across, swiftly slicing away at the robot’s torso with trained strokes until it burst into purple pixels and faded away. Keith stumbled, a cacaphony of hurt noises following amongst the blaring of the training system, telling him that he had failed the training level and would have to start over if he wanted to pass on to the next one. Keith ignored it and the alarms, his summersaulting drive running it over in favour of continuing its downward spiral. 

He wanted to burn. 

And though that sentence could mean two different things: 1.) He wanted to make things burn and 2.) He wanted to burn himself, it didn’t matter because both were equally true. 

The sound of metal scraping against metal grew, making Keith’s whole being shake as he was reminded of the sound of sentries walking through the palace halls or Lotor clawing his long icy fingernails against the walls or dog tags kissing each other as they toppled from a mother’s neck or tools wickedly toying with Shiro’s partially manufactured skin. It made his teeth grit and grind harshly, the pain being the only thing keeping him grounded. 

Keith slid on the floor, ignoring the way he slammed against it before making two cuts to the back of the last robot’s knees. The prince had already moved on by the time that it collapsed to the ground and disappeared out of sight. His anger had not been satisfied. Nor had his itch for action, which had grown like a parasite within him because no matter what he did, he could barely count it as action if it wasn’t action towards his goals. Goals which seemed impossible. The romantic dreams of a child. 

“You have failed training level twelve. Would you like to restart?” barked the speakers. Keith felt his jaw grate, his temples twitching. Sure, he’d like a restart. At life. The voice continued mocking him. 

The simulated pain cut off, leaving the prince wishing for its return. He needed something real and tangible to cling onto. Something physical. Pain that wouldn’t leave until…

“You have failed training level twelve. Would you like to restart?”

A sussorous hiss slithered between Keith’s teeth and his eyes zero-ined on the sentry guards standing like statues along the perimeter. That was pain that would take a while to heal. As his gray eyes focused on them, deadly and sharp, he couldn’t spot a difference between them and the training robots. 

And so, in his insanity, he bounded for one of them.

His sword hit a weapon. To Keith’s surprise, it wasn’t one of the sentries’ weapons. 

“You have failed training level twelve. Would you like to restart?”

Keith scowled, refusing to look up at the offender who had stopped his catapult and instead pushing harshly against whatever had stopped him. He could’ve burned holes through his and the other’s sword with his glare. 

The sword blocking him pushed back, making Keith stumble. 

“Keith.”

That voice snapped him out of his reverie. Eyes blown wide and wild, his gaze flicked from a glare at his sword to a surprised blow-up at the sword of the voice. Recognition sunk in. Nonplussed, his jaw slacked just slightly, his features open. He couldn’t bring himself to harden them. 

“ _ Shiro _ .” Catching himself, his stare hardened into a glare once again. “Why are you stopping me?” He swung his sword at Shiro’s again, groaning in frustration at his strength. He growled. “Just let me-”

“-Because we both know that this won’t help you get what you want. Don’t let your anger make you reckless.” Keith’s eyes betrayed him and he looked up at Shiro’s face. At the sight of the shadows in his eyes, the scars, the wrinkles, and the gray hair that peaked from his head, Keith surrendered and dropped his sword with a clang. His heart sank in his stomach like a stone in the sea and concern conquered his features, a different pinch between his brows forming. He thanked the gods that his fire hadn’t been extinguished at the picture of that tired face. The fire was still there, but it took the back burner as a kettle of worry was placed on the stovetop. Set to a boil, and Keith’s eyes danced across Shiro’s features, his lips pursed and muscles tense as he tried (and paradoxically, simultaneously, tried to block out) what had happened to the older man. A blue handprint stuck out against his pale skin, interrupting the scar that ran along the bridge of Shiro’s face. Keith let out a brief sigh through his nose- unsettled that he was relieved that the only injury seemingly created was the icy slap to Shiro’s face. 

“What did they do to you?” Keith asked, though he knew that Shiro wouldn’t answer. He rarely did, and even if he did so, he never went into detail. Keith could only guess that Shiro was trying to relieve the guilt on the boy’s shoulders and keep him from worrying. 

What Shiro didn’t know was that Keith often found out either way. If he wasn’t forced to watch behind one-way glass as it happened, Zarkon would have him watch it after hand on recordings. And just like how Shiro refused to tell Keith what had happened to him, Keith refused to admit to Shiro that he had ever had to witness such. He wouldn’t let Shiro feel any guilt for bearing his guilt. 

Oftentimes, he wished Shiro would tell him so that he could prepare for the nightmarish scenes. 

Shiro sighed, his shoulders slumping as the corners of his lips quirked upward. “Calm down, kiddo. Our  _ beloved _ prince had an emergency meeting to attend so our new contract will have to wait.” To see Shiro over exaggerating the ‘beloved’ in such a humorous way made Keith’s tense muscles begin to relax. He stepped back from his stance, his sword falling to his side.

However, though Shiro was safe, his words did nothing to calm how antsy he was. “So you don’t know what the contract is?”

“I don’t, and I doubt I’d be allowed to tell you.”

Keith smirked, attempting to lighten his own nerves. “Since when has that stopped you, old timer?”

“I’m sorry, Keith, but my lips will most likely be sealed this time around.” Shiro shot him an apologetic smile, sending Keith a pang of guilt. Keith knew the consequences and he shouldn’t have been pushing Shiro when he wasn’t involved in the contract. The bearer of the pain had full say over what he wanted to share or not and Keith was willing to try and respect that. 

“Of course.”

“I know that you’re anxious to do something but you won’t be able to achieve anything in this state. Remember-”

“-Patience yields focus.” Keith’s tone was one of ‘yeah, yeah’ and whatever’s but his true appreciation showed in the quirk of his lips and the sigh of his shoulders.

Shiro smiled, playfully shoving his shoulder against the boy’s. “Yes. I promise that it’s just a matter of time.”

“How do you know? Last time I checked, you haven’t been to the future,” Keith deadpanned.

“Who says that you have to go to the future to meet it? Perhaps it came to me.” It was said like a joke but Keith caught the edge of seriousness that clung to his features, a faraway look in his eyes.

“Like prophecies and visions? Everyone knows that that’s a bunch of witch nonsense, Shiro.”

“I guess it suits me then, being the creation of one.”

Keith glanced sidelong at Shiro, his eyes narrowing and lips pursing into a thin line. He had always wanted to argue against that. Witches and warlocks left such a sour taste on his tongue while Shiro’s name was sweet. Two such contrasting flavours did not belong in juxtaposition to one another. However, Keith always found himself unable to prove that dreadful fact wrong. No Lunaean could be born with wings, nor could they be born with not only the “bridge” element of metal but also the Soleran element of electricity. Such a combination of Lunaean and Soleran characteristics could only be found in a witch or conjured by a witch’s attempt at a hybrid or by the natural mating of a Lunaean and Soleran- which was said to only be able to occur under the influence of a love potion or other method of manipulation. No matter the circumstance, a witch or wizard was involved in the creation of the brother he knew today. 

Perhaps it was so unsettling because the vile phrases beheld to Shiro were not entirely wrong. Most of them were true. Shiro was a witch’s mongrel. So, in truth, the phrasing was correct, though it was harder to argue against the tone of said phrase if it was indeed factual. 

Shiro was a good person, but witch’s mongrels were not supposed to be. 

Maybe Keith was a creation of a witch too. Like they said. 

And maybe, if it was true, that didn’t necessarily make him wrong or evil. A creator wasn’t its creation and a creation wasn’t its creator. Shiro, a tainted-blood witch’s mongrel, was more good than his pure-blood father could ever be. 

“I suppose it won’t be until tomorrow that the contract is signed. We have a ball to get ready for tonight.”

“A ball?” Keith asked, a dark eyebrow raised. 

“The one with King Caledvwich and Queen Caliborum of the Kingdom of Trefles?”

“Yes. Will anyone else be in attendance?” Keith paused before adding on. “Anyone that I should be warned about?”

“General Acxa, Commander Sendak, and Lotor’s shiver of sharks.”

Keith huffed, scowling. “At least I know what I’m walking into.”

\--

“You couldn’t find your paints, could you?” Shiro questioned. His arms were crossed loosely over his chest, his weight shifted back against the metal wall. Keith often wondered how Shiro always seemed to be so tranquil and could always keep his head up despite what he had gone through. Perhaps it was all a face he put on. If Keith looked close enough, he could see the shadows in his eyes. It was in those flashes of darkness that Keith was reminded of how broken Shiro really was.

Keith sighed, his position mimicking the royal guard’s. “No, I couldn’t.” A scowl sunk his features as his heart plummeted to his gut. Those were his mother’s paints- the enchanted kind she bought from a mystic that never ran out. And he had a sneaking suspicion of where they were. The person responsible had to be the same person who had locked up the workshop so that Keith couldn’t use his hands to work on a machine again after his discussion with Lotor (which was probably for the best anyways because heaven knows what Lotor would’ve done if he caught him in those clothes again).

“No wonder. I thought I saw them in Lotor’s office. And then I saw you like that in the training rooms and it became clear that you were trying to channel your energy into something.” Looks like Keith’s suspicions were correct.

“Of course he has them.”

“You’re already thinking of a way to get them back, aren’t you? Keith, breaking and entering is not exactly-”

Of course Keith was already conjuring up a partially-illegal plan in his mind. A sly smirk flickered to life on Keith’s face. “Who said I would be breaking  _ or _ entering?”

“I’m sure you’re clever enough to get them without doing either. I don’t know if that fact scares me less or more though.”

“Don’t be worried. I won’t get caught. You know me.” 

“I don’t want you getting hurt.”

He paused, letting the silence stretch. He didn’t have to say the  _ You know I won’t be the one hurt if I’m caught  _ for it to be communicated. Nor did he have to add  _ which is why I’m never caught, because I’m extra careful for you _ . Nor did he need to express his anger at Lotor for it to be felt by his brother. “I think Lotor’s trying to make me lose my sanity.” Keith scoffed at that, a sad laugh trickling from his lips before he swallowed it down with a gulp and looked up at the starry sky. “I didn’t realize I had any left to lose.”

“If you lose your sanity, I hope that Lotor finds it.” Shiro chuckled, sending little puffs of clouds into the cold air of the ice gardens. If he looked at it from a certain angle, he could convince himself that Shiro was a wind-breathing dragon- a creature far more normal than that of Shiro. 

“Hell knows he so desperately needs it.”

“Isn’t the phrase supposed to be ‘heaven knows’?”

“Heaven gave up on Lotor long ago. The only ones left keeping track are the ones rooting for him and his ways.” Keith doubted that there really was a heaven at all. And if there was one, counting their good deeds and bad deeds, then it was more like some wicked data-tracking computer than any great thing trying to help people. He wouldn’t say that though. He knew how idealistic Shiro was, not letting his dreams be crushed even while in a real hell.

“Well, let’s hope that heaven passes over this.”

Suddenly, an object flew out from one of Shiro’s vest pockets. It hovered between them, Shiro’s eyes trained on the horizon as he stuffed his hands in his trouser pockets, rocking back and forth on his polished oxfords. 

Keith eyed the object, soon realizing that it was a cigarette with a thin metal spiral around it. Not only was it a cigarette, but it wasn’t one of the fake Lunaean ones he always had that were safe and didn’t produce real smoke. It wasn’t one of the metal simulation cigarettes, but, instead, an authentic one. He hadn’t had one in a long time since they were hard to come by and not well-liked due to their health risks. The sight of it gave him nostalgia and he began to sink into another time, into the first day he spent sitting on the roof of the abandoned zanoril hut he found as he watched the sunset and smoked some cigarettes smuggled out of crashed Soleran fighter jets. 

He hadn’t even had a safe high-tech Lunaean one in ages. His father and brother liked to confiscate everything of his that gave him peace. He had his father’s old silver pipe hidden away still but Keith refused to use it. That was reserved for one person and that person was dead.

Keith laughed through his nose in a huff. “Did you seriously wrap one of your metal springs around this just so you could give it to me so dramatically?”

“No. I did that to practice my mageia, of course.”

“Of course,” Keith said dryly. 

“Well go on. Take it.”

Keith wasn’t about to say that he wasn’t tempted to take it; if he was being honest, he was  _ highly  _ tempted to do so, but Shiro’s past lectures flicked him in the back of his mind, making him wonder if this was a test. He eyed the cigarette warily. “What happened to your whole ‘those things will kill you before your family does at this rate’ spiel?”

“I’d rather you smoke than get the both of us executed for attacking sentries.” Now that sounded like Shiro. 

“Probably a good idea.” Keith nodded, taking the gift gingerly between his fingers. The texture made him start. “Wait, is this made of paper? Do you know how rare these things are?” Keith inspected it further, examining the black symbols that lined the length of it. “Wait…”

“Yes, it’s Soleran. And it regenerates. Which is why I only want you using this if you are to the point of explosion. This isn’t like the fake Lunaean cigarettes that you are used to having that don’t harm your lungs. This baby is meant for Solerans, who can take it. This is real smoke and that’s real fire that comes out of it. And, unfortunately, out of all the Soleran elements I got, it was not a healing based one. So, be careful.”

“Yeah, yeah. Try not to kill myself. I got it.” He paused. “Why not just get a safe Lunaean one though?” It didn’t seem like the rewards of getting such a rare object outweighed the fact that said object was also forbidden, not practical, and dangerous. He wasn’t complaining though. He took risks. 

“You’ll see.”

Keith held it up to his lips, waiting for it to turn on as his lips curled around it. Puzzled, he pushed his middle and forefinger around it back as he scowled. Then he realised that he wasn’t smoking a Lunaean cigarette and hence he was going to need a lighter.

Shiro chuckled softly. “Here you go.”

In an instant, a lighter flew to the base of the cigarette and flickered to life before him, the light glinting off of the metal Shiro could control in licks from vermillion tongues. Keith watched the fire’s energy seep from the flame and down into the engravings of the metal- once barely seen but now glowing and pulsing scarlet to reveal the Corazonian emblem. 

Once the cigarette was lit, the lighter died down and was slipped into the inside pocket of Keith’s vest. A lagniappe: just as outlawed as the first gift if not even more.

Keith was never one to be stopped by the law though. Rules were made to be broken and all that. So Keith inhaled deeply, a harsh taste of tobacco flooding his mouth before an added cherry and cinnamon tastes kicked in, making it a bit more bearable. He held it for a second, feeling something stir inside of him. It seemed as if the smoke inside him was coming to life, sending a rush of energy through his spine. 

He shivered and promptly exhaled. However, as the smoke left his mouth, it felt as if more had left as well. Glancing down, the smoke seemed to move a bit too animatedly from his lips and Keith could’ve sworn he saw… cough. The young prince erupted into a hacking fit, his violet-gray eyes blown wide with awe. 

Shiro patted Keith on the back, a sympathetic smile sugaring his lips. “Yeah, that stuff is pretty strong.”

Keith tried to tell Shiro that yes, it was strong but no, that wasn’t why he was coughing. But the words never left his mouth and so he instead shook his head horizontally. The reason for his fit was because he had seen  _ something  _ in the smoke. 

To make sure that he wasn’t going insane, Keith took another puff. This time, he didn’t cough and he let out the smoke in a steady stream. Though, the strange sensation of something crawling out of him still remained. 

Perhaps he was indeed mad. The ringlet of smoke danced like a ribbon from his lips until it began to coil into forms, twisting, curling, and being sculpted into a familiar looking creature. It was a scorpio with the horns of a ram, some sort of hybrid of Keith’s sun and moon sign. The scorpio was loosely formed, scurrying up Keith’s arm as its curved horns knocked and pincers snapped at his clothing, searching. With a sort of catlike curiosity it journeyed into his vest pocket before scurrying out and perching on his shoulder.

Keith eyed it warily and the Scorpio’s metasoma whipped its sharp stinger in return. He could’ve sworn that it was glaring at him- the two dark holes of its eyes sparked with embers. 

“What the hell is that?” Keith breathed, glaring back.

“It’s supposed to represent you as your astrological signs. Small, aggressive, curious, adventurous, and defensive? Seems just like you.”

Keith flinched as it rammed its head into his collarbone and simultaneously plunged its stinger into the curve of his shoulder, though he soon realized with a sigh of relief that he was safe. The scorpio was just smoke and the horns and stinger went through him like the weapons of the training robots- this time without the simulated pain. 

Then the creature scampered through the air again as if it were solid ground before coming to land on the cigarette still in Keith’s hand. Burning cinders decorated its body, dim fires that were positioned exactly like the stars of both of the constellations. 

“It wants you to puff again.”

Keith smirked in pleasant surprise. He let his curiosity get to the best of him. “Have you done this before, Shiro?” 

“Of course I have. Back in my day.”

“Shiro, you’re 26.”

“Dang, that old already, huh? I’m borderline ancient,” Shiro said, bowing his back and rubbing the small of it for the affect. “Now go on.”

Another puff. This time, it felt as if something other than smoke entered his lungs. Tastes and scents slipped in. Cinnamon. Mint. Oranges. Salt. He exhaled. The Scorpio faded into the zephyr and the smoke pranced and prowled before his eyes. He was almost expecting the Scorpio to come back, though the attitude of this smoke was different. It seemed to dance before him, coming closer and then pushing away like the tides in the Western Hemisphere, teasing him. It was curious like the Scorpio but also playful and much, well,  _ more _ . While the scorpio was dark and elusive, not bringing much attention to itself, this new-forming creature was wild and loud, though just as dangerous. It tripped, diving to the ground before flipping upwards. A roar sounded from it and by the time the animal had come back up, it had fully formed. A Leo. 

Scent of the sea. 

The Leo didn’t look like the ones he fought today, that much was for certain. Though he couldn’t tell where it was from, especially with the limited grayscale palette. 

The Leo bounced in the air around him, roaring and loud as it bounded towards Keith and sat on the shoulder opposite of the one the scorpio had. It spent a moment or two playing with the long strands of Keith’s hair before it rubbed its gray face against his cheek and neck, purring as it continued to nuzzle him. 

Keith had always liked felines. He wished he could reach out and pet the creature but he knew his fingers would sink through its ghostly appearance. How beautiful the creature was.

It licked the side of his face as a goodbye and pounced off, shrinking and landing on Keith’s cigarette. 

“What does this handsome fellow mean?” Keith said, brushing the air around it. He didn’t really believe in this sort of stuff but he knew Shiro did.

Shiro usually would have rolled his eyes and made a comment about his love for cats but instead he shrugged, his eyes darting sideways, away from Keith. “I don’t really know. I have no clue what that means. I was only told what the first one meant.”

Keith hummed in acknowledgment, too entranced by the Leo to question further. 

Shiro’s lips quirked upwards at the sight of Keith’s open face, relaxed shoulders, and slight smile. Keith never knew how to react to that. Shiro just seemed to be constantly looking for ways to make everyone near him feel better and despite how much Keith wanted to stubbornly keep his fire lit, Shiro always knew how to calm the fire back down to the coals. And perhaps Keith let his expression be a bit more open near his brother so that he could see that he had accomplished his altruistic goal, even if he kept his face usually blank- it was only fair to keep his expression unreadable when he couldn’t seem to read anyone else at all. 

He trusted Shiro though. So he let Shiro read him, even if he couldn’t understand the language of his expressions as well without Shiro making his feelings obvious. He never was good at doing such. People were confusing. 

“Now, instead of inhaling, you need to blow on the cigarette.”

“What?” Keith deadpanned, brows furrowing.

“Trust me. This is the best one.”

Keith shrugged and did as told, a new rush burning through him at the novelty of the experience. He liked not knowing what would happen next. 

This time, as he blowed onto the cigarette, it again felt as if something more than air and smoke were coming out of him. Heat rose from his lungs, through his throat, and into his mouth. A spicy flame on his tongue. At once, knowledge flooded before him, though ahead and unable to be grasped like a history book on the next shelf, the next time. It existed, but not in this moment. Keith felt more like himself than he ever had, though not at all like the self he was at that present second. His skin was tight, energy flew through him like the wind, and a zephyr swirled around him. He felt alive and warm and loved and… happy. An uncontrollable grin blossomed to life across his cheeks, his expression open and brightness filling his sight. Color seeped through his ears. Something dead decayed inside of him as something new and foreign grew. 

There was fire. Fire fuelled by passion and drive and love rather than anger. It curled from him as ghostly arms came around him in an embrace. 

He was larger and greater and above  _ this _ . 

And while it was all great, Keith couldn’t help but feel off. Like it wasn’t for him. Like it was a stranger he hadn’t met yet. It felt private and as if he were intruding, he reflexively glanced away. Unfortunately, you can’t glance away from feelings. 

Then it was fully yanked-  _ yanked _ , making him wonder if he had been holding onto it- out of him, as if a ghost were being exorcised from his body from the tips of his toes to his scalp. He found himself leaning forward as it was pulled, rather than pushed, out. He lingered there, gasping and eyes alight as if it were to come back and he would be drowned in the foreign sensations again. 

Then it left the cigarette and he saw what had been born within him. 

There was less smoke and more fire. Flames and flames and flames poured into a form as if he were blowing up a balloon. As if he were a fire-breathing dragon. 

That’s what it blew up into. Wind stirred it and before him was a dragon. And swords. And gold. And the sun. 

“Holy shit,” Keith murmured to himself.

Shiro’s jaw dropped. 

“What is it?”

“The last one is just supposed to be something cool to feel and look at. A show, really. There’s no meaning behind it.” 

“How does it work?”

Shiro shrugged. “Some sort of mageia. Please don’t take it apart and figure it out like you do with everything though. It was hard to get that and we both know that you often leave your bodies open after surgery because you don’t know how to sew the body back up.”

“Your metaphors are disturbing.” Keith flicked the cigarette. “I’ll figure it out another way.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

Shiro pulled his gold pocket watch from his trouser pocket. Keith had always loved the old thing. It was a gift from “someone special” according to Shiro. 

The pocket watch was more like a tiny booklet of clocks though because if he one forward, a second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth page of a clock would appear. 

The first was a classic timekeeper of the ora, minuit, second, and deciseconds. The black hands were thin, metal, and similar to that of sharp pointed keys, each pointing at a cardinal number along the white border of the face. Gold, bronze, and silver gears turned effortlessly behind the glass, an intricate design of luminescent gold lace spread across their bodies. 

The second clock tracked the night of the month. Instead of numbers, glowing phases of the moons were depicted. It must’ve had mageia incorporated because they looked like actual moons, with smoky ribbons of clouds drifting back and forth across the face of the clock. 

The third calculated the month. Again, instead of numbers, there were the symbols of the astrological signs. The hand would morph into whatever constellation it was on. 

A fourth told the year and was a large, bright sun in the center of the face with eight hands that made up the arms and solar flares of the ruling star. Each hand was a different size and had a small cardinal number on the tip. I tracked the millennium, II tracked the century, III tracked the decade, IV tracked the year, and the other four tracked the war year. 

Keith had never got to see the fifth. 

The sixth one was a flat sort of hourglass (though it went on for much longer than an hour) with an extremely thin waist. Two either side of its curves was a celestial body- on one side was the sun and the other, their main moon, Luna. Shiro had always refused to tell what it was counting down to though.

This time, when Shiro flipped open its case, he only glanced at the first page. “We should start heading to the ballroom.”

Keith huffed, squishing the end of his cigarette into the ashtray Shiro had provided for him. “Well, let’s go face some sharks.”

Thank the moons that they made it in time. Keith had decided to make a detour and get some perfume and a mint to cover the scent of smoke on him from his room and hence it had been a close call. 

Sweat making the fallen strands from his ponytail stick to the back of his neck, he waited for his name to be announced. 

“All welcome Prince Akira Tsukiya of the Lunaean Empire,” a stalk, pink, horned creature announced. 

There were only three ways people reacted to his entrance. One, people continued to chatter as if he was a nobody and didn’t even deserve so much of a glance; Two, their conversations stopped short the moment his foot stepped on the ice flooring and they gawked at him with the mouths of fish and eyes of owls; and three, hushed whispers and not-so-subtle laughter. The third reaction came mostly from Lotor and his squad. 

“Such a warm greeting,” Keith muttered to Shiro at his side. “Now, I’m going to plot over some drinks. Would you like to join?”

“I actually…” Shiro glanced around the large spacious room.

“Who are you looking for?”

Shiro shook his head. “No one. Sorry, I’m just a bit spacy.”

Keith nodded. “Right,” he deadpanned. “Whatever, old timer.”

“Be careful.”

“When am I not careful?” He meant to say it teasingly but it came out with a defensive bite.

Shiro raised an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’

Keith just shot a half-hearted glare and slid off to the royals’ bar. He slunk into one of the bar stools, thankful that it wasn’t made of ice like seemingly everything else was. Instead, the seat of the stool was a sort of bubble that shaped around his form for full comfort. “A serpenta tequila and a dragon fireball. One shot each. Then a gin and tonic on ice,” he ordered. 

“Aren’t all of these on ice?” Keith’s eyes snapped to one of the apprentices beside the main bartender working, who was biting a lip like he was holding back laughter. The owner of the voice was a Kori man made out of an opulent purple ice and with short hair as white as snow. He was tall, thin, muscular, and wearing classic black servant attire made for his species. Despite the chilling temperature in the room, beads of sweat- or, rather, droplets of his melted self- clung to his temple. Keith watched one drip from his fringe, the gears in his head turning as he admired the boy’s ruggish appearance, tried to understand his joke, and attempted to fully figure out the details of his plan at the same time. 

He recognized the apprentice as one of the stable boys- Rolo, he believed his name was. Many times Keith had caught him staring at him when he was taking care of Kuro, Nix, and Kosmo. And many times he recognized that look in his eyes. Sometimes, when he was bored, he pondered the idea of putting that look into action. 

He had never done anything with a Kori- an ice person- before. 

Keith raised an eyebrow. 

“Because the floor and counters are made of…” Rolo trailed off, looking bashful as Keith gave a flat stare back. 

Keith pursed his lips, giving Rolo a look that said, ‘just give me the drinks’. As he said, people were confusing and laughing at jokes or joking along really wouldn’t help him get his mother’s paints back. And ogling someone definitely wouldn’t.

The main bartender set down the serpenta tequila shot and Keith knocked it back in a gulp. Rolo’s eyes followed the motion. 

Or… wait a second. Maybe laughing at his jokes and ogling would be of benefit… 

Rolo swallowed and turned away to prepare the drinks. “The others are coming right up.”

He sighed through his nose, just quiet enough for the boy of ice not to hear. Here lied Keith’s night of relative peace. It lived for a grand time of a minute. It was a noble sacrifice for his mother’s paints. Rip, sweet isolation. 

He would need help if he was going to carry out his plan. 

Three… two… one… ensue laughing. 

The bartender and Rolo gave him a strange look. 

“Sorry, sorry. I just got it. I’m a little slow.” Keith chuckled. Then, he leaned in, tracing the rim of his shot glass. Rolo stopped in his tracks, curious brown eyes raking over the prince as he leaned against the bar, ingredients still in the air. Keith couldn’t help but think that the brown eyes, though glistening more than human ones, were not as captivating as the ones belonging to Leo. He didn’t know why he was thinking about the Soleran at the moment, especially when he had a task at hand. 

Keith played on a shy expression as he glanced down at his glass, and then he looked up, straight at Rolo with eyes half-lidded. With a confident smirk on his lips, he let his voice go deeper and let it border on a husky line. “If only it was served on different ice.” 

Rolo’s expression slipped from surprised to flirtatious in a flash. He grinned back, leaning even closer to Keith. “I’m sure we can make a special order.” 

“How much do you charge?”

“If you are good enough, it’ll be on the house.”

“Well, it’s a good thing that I have no money on me then.”

“Cocky, huh? I like it.” For a brief moment, Keith thought back to Leandro and his teasing in Solera. Ugh, get out of his head, stupid pretty boy. 

“I’m sure you’ll like other things as well,” Keith said. His tone was playful and flirtatious but there was always that edge of distance as usual. He didn’t mean anything by this, and he rarely did. Whether it was for fun or to get something, he hardly ever felt anything more than a physical attraction if that at all. But boy was he good at acting having done it all his life. And knowing Rolo, he could probably see through it but he doubted that his feelings would get too hurt. He was a playboy and the distance in their tones was mutual, even if they leaned in closer to each other. 

Jakile, a snake-like alien, slithered in behind the bar then, muttering, “My shift now.”

Rolo raised an eyebrow at Keith. “Well, I just have one more order to carry out before my break.”

This was definitely not how he expected this night to go. He really should’ve thought out the whole “making out with someone made of ice” thing. It was wetter than it usually was, which wouldn’t have been a problem if he could tell if the liquid running down his chin and seemingly all over his face was slobber or his melted… flesh? Or, both? Now thinking about it, neither seemed as appetizing as he had said that they would. It was also cold, which he didn’t necessarily mind- really a balance between both temperatures made everything good but there was no heat and it was already cold in the ice gardens. He found himself pushing harder against Rolo for warmth only to find more coldness ther in his arms. 

Seriously, he was wet everywhere. How did icepeople do anything with anyone that wasn’t their own species? 

“You’re so hot,” Rolo mumbled between kisses. 

Yeah, for real. His own body heat was melting Rolo. Thankfully he was regenerating, but goodness. It was hard to kiss something falling off. 

Keith couldn’t say the same to Rolo though, with either definition. 

Keith longed for heat and heat. He wanted it hot and he wanted to burn but this really wasn’t the distraction he was thinking of. His lips were feeling numb and he had the suspicion that this would be much more enjoyable if he wasn’t a weird Lunaean who didn’t like the cold and couldn’t handle it. His body just seemed to break all of the rules of his species and of who he was supposed to be. 

Still, he needed to carry this out for just a bit longer. 

There was one problem though. Rolo would not let him take the lead for a single moment, and it was pissing him off. If you are going to lead a kiss, at least be good at it. Wait, and is he… sucking on his teeth?

Maybe he really was a good kisser in icepeople terms. He was a playboy after all and it seemed like Rolo was constantly playing with someone. He hadn’t really ever seen him with a human though. 

Keith tried. He did what he usually would’ve done and tried to nibble on the bottom of Rolo’s lip only to have pain vibrate through his gums. Right, ice. 

Thankfully, it worked nonetheless, even if Keith felt like his tooth was just attacked. Startled, Rolo gasped and Keith had the perfect entrance- Holy  _ fuck _ how is it even colder inside his mouth? 

Rolo’s tongue was the only thing not frozen. It was like a weird to have his tongue mingle with something so hard. He tried to imagine that he was licking a popsicle or eating icecream but the flavour of his mouth really wasn’t helping. 

Keith tilted his head to just the right angle and- there. Rolo melted against him. Finally. 

“Akira,” he whispered.

Calling him Akira was probably the biggest turn off ever. Which is why he didn’t feel bad when he pushed Rolo a bit too hard up against the stable gates. 

Perfect, just where he wanted him. Keith grabbed his wrist, twisting it momentarily so that it hit against the hand recognition pad before flipping it around and pinning him to the door. 

The hand recognition pad flashed red, thankfully out of sight from Rolo. It didn’t work? Damnit, Keith’s heat had melted off too much of his palm. Damn Keith and his heat. What now? Keith traced back his memories. Rolo had to have gone here with palms not fully formed many times, right? How else did he get in then? Then it clicked. There was a keyhole that Rolo was supposed melt his hand into and then turn. It only worked for his ice. It was hidden behind the metal diamond on the door. 

Rolo’s hands positioned there, he swept the metal diamond back and stuck Rolo’s melting pinkie in there. Naturally, his body began to freeze back into its normal shape, filling the entire keyhole and creating a perfect key. 

He turned his pinkie, playing all of his special tricks and hoping that he was distracting the stable boy enough. Rolo didn’t seem to notice. 

The stable gates clicked open and swiftly Keith kicked a rock into the space between the gates to keep it open and ensure that he wouldn’t need to do that again. 

Then he broke Rolo’s pinkie free and it began to grow back.

Rolo, thankfully, didn’t feel pain in his hands because he had broken them so much. However, he noticed his snapped finger. He pulled away. 

“Sorry, I suppose I was a bit too rough,” Keith said, sounding like he was too distracted with wanting to touch Rolo for it to have been anything else. 

Rolo chuckled, having their lips meet again. “It’s fine, I like it that way.”

Keith would say that he agreed but perhaps humans and icepeople had different meanings of rough due to their different types of nerves and feeling. He wasn’t up for finger dismemberment. 

Apparently he was too good because then Rolo flipped them around and pinned Keith against the door. He couldn’t follow along for a single second, could he? Now he would have to physically push Rolo away in order to get away and make some excuse. 

The door swayed back behind him, the rock coming loose. Fuck. 

He quickly moved his wrists to obscure the diamond and the key. Rolo was not having it though and he split his wrists apart to get a better angle. 

He had to do something, quickly. Jamming his heel uncomfortably between the door and the frame, he pulled the rock back into place with the toe of his foot and pressed on it so that it would stick in the mud. 

He had what he needed, so now he could go. Pressing a button on the communication device he had, it ringed out. 

Keith pushed Rolo back. “Fuck, that’s our royal  _ heinous _ .”

“Oh lord.”

“You’re telling me.” Keith sighed. “I need to go, or otherwise he’ll kill us both.”

“You’re probably not wrong.”

“We should continue this sometime though.” And by that, he meant ‘I’m going to be polite here because I might need you again but I really hope that this isn’t continued’. 

“Yeah… umm… about that. I think you might be a bit too hot for me. Seriously, I can usually handle Galrans and humans but you… gods, Keith. You definitely aren’t an ice inducer like Lotor and Zarkon. Your temperature is so high that I would think you were sick if I didn’t know you. Regenerating is exhausting.” Rolo smirked. “And I can tell that you wanted to stop much earlier. You were shivering like crazy.”

“Why didn’t you stop then?”

“The real question is, why didn’t you? I figured that you must’ve been up to something by then. Actually, I knew from the moment you started flirting with me because you have never showed interest in me in the past. Also, that laugh was way too forced. I was curious though. And considering the fact that I’ve caught you multiple times sneaking around here on the secret cameras-”

“-Wait, there are secret cameras?” Was what he asked. He wasn’t surprised about his laughter. That was one emotion he had a hard time faking. 

“Yes, Ulaz set them up and runs them. He says that he only has them up in case a huge crime happens and the others go down so no one watches them but I’ve noticed little differences about the stables and then I go and look at the footage and find you responsible.”

“Fuck.”

“Then I knew for a fact that you were trying to get something when I started sucking on your teeth and nothing happened. Do you really think that I’m that bad of a kisser? I may mostly make out with icepeople but I’m not an idiot. And I really doubt that your taste is that bad if you can kiss like that. Anyways, then this happened.” Rolo pointed to the key and pulled back diamond. “So, what shenanigans are you up to this time?”

“Again, our royal heinous.”

“That doesn’t answer anything. What are you doing?”

“Why should I tell you? You’ll probably report on me.”

“Considering what your family has done to my people, do you really think I’d report on you? Your enemies’ enemies are your friends and all that.”

“Lotor stole something from me.”

“Well, have you disabled the cameras?”

“No, because I’m not doing anything wrong. I actually need them on to prove myself innocent.”

“Hmmm… Okay. Well, in any case, I’ll cover for you. Is there anything I can do?”

Keith looked at his shoes. “If they come after Kosmo, please free her.”

“Of course. You know that I love that girl.”

“Thanks.”

“So we don’t have to do this again?”

Keith nodded.

“Thank goodness. You’re not my type anyways.”

He glared. “Stop checking me out then.”

“I can admit that you look nice without you being my type.”

Keith shrugged. “I need to finish my mission now, so if you’ll excuse me…”

“Of course. I’ll take the next shift and get Lotor too drunk to notice your disappearance.”

“Ulaz likes me. I’ll make sure you get a raise.” Keith turned away. 

Now, to carry out his plan. Keith: 1, Lotor: 1,000. 

At least it was better than nothing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: I WILL BE DELETING THE CHAPTERS POSTED BY JANUARY 15TH, 2018
> 
> I’m going to be rewriting this fanfiction completely and will be posting the new parts then. My apologies.


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